Green Daily

Now that we've learned how to correctly spell Compact Fluorescent Light bulb, let's discuss what is dangerous about these bulbs.

They've got mercury in them. A teaspoon of mercury destroys Superman and all of his comic book friends. Dorothy and Toto get obliterated. The Lion can't save them. Mercury doesn't go in landfills--at least not when the landfill police are watching--and it doesn't go in the recycling bin. It's unsafe for both.

"Where oh where can the mercury go," you and your little friend Toto ask.

Just click your heels three times, Dorothy, and you'll find yourself in one of two places: The local hazardous material disposal station or at lightbulbrecycling.com.

One of our readers recently posted a reply to Plastic Recycling by the Numbers. She'd heard that plastics labeled 3, 6 and 7 were not only toxic but bad for the environment if you recycled them. We've posted a couple of times on plastics and their numbers. Let's go over what we know.

If you throw your #3s and 4s and 5s into your recycling bin, and your city doesn't recycle them, you jeopardize the whole lot of plastics. If a group of plastics has too many types that can't be recycled as #1 and #2 can then there is a chance that plastic will be landfilled or shipped overseas. It's a matter of sorting. You'll also sabotage your own recycling efforts if you don't remove labels, caps and food matter. Your plastic water bottle may be a #1 but the cap is not. Throw it away.

That said, while some of these other plastics can release toxins like phthalates and Bisphenol A, that doesn't mean

Every week we pick a theme to explore in more depth, and this week that theme is eco-friendly pets. To read all our posts related to this theme, click here.

I once bought a bag of cat food that touted its all-natural, all-organic ingredients. It had raisins and bananas and other items I had never seen in a list of ingredients for cat food. My cats refused to eat it. And I thank them for it.

Cats and raisins don't agree. Raisins cause kidney damage in cats, though at the time I didn't know it.

Advertisements told me my boys would love Greenies. You may recall the 2006 news stories of dogs dying from indigestible Greenies. The cat treats are supposedly very different. Nonetheless, my cats refuse to eat them.

So I've done a little digging for natural pet treats. I can't testify that these treats will clean your dog's teeth or that your cat will even want to eat them. I can't promise anything. You could stick with tins of tuna or sardines, but be careful of the mercury.

This is what I found:

Sometimes everyone wants to talk about the Yankees, and sometimes everyone wants to talk about gas prices. Personally, I'd rather not talk about either. But gas is on everyone's lips, from Hillary Clinton to Chris Matthews, the price of crude is just crude.

But gas prices are only one factor in how much consumers are spending for fuel. Congestion, vehicle size and distance also play major roles. According to Forbes cities like Houston have the cheapest gas, but drivers there are spending the most on gas.

You see, while drivers in Houston are paying a mere $3.44 a gallon for gas, they're also driving huge vehicles. According to a U.S. Department of Transportation study 20-percent of drivers in the south drive trucks and another 16-percent drive SUVs.

If you bought your CFL from someplace like Ikea's $1 bin, you might be regretting it. In fact, you may hate every moment you have to spend reading or watching tv or scanning Green Daily by the light of that antiseptic light bulb.

I have two solutions for you. One option is to get a new type of bulb. There are several out there that put out better light--not to pick on Ikea. Your second option is to burn through your long-lived pack with a Lunet light cover. I'll start there.

These are basically plastic covers that fit into your ceiling fixture. Four styles are available: frosted, Roman, antique glass and Art Deco. Of course, if the offending bulb happens to be in a lamp, I've got no Lunet light cover to help you. You could perhaps design your own and market it at home expos as Lunet has done.

Or, you could put that bulb into your recessed light fixture, add the cover then purchase different CFLs. Last year Popular Mechanics ran a lab test for the best compact fluorescent. Researchers found that all the CFLs they tested beat the Sylvan Double Life Soft White. That is, the quality, color and brightness of the light as well as the life of the bulbs were better. N:Vision tested the best, and the MaxLite Micro Max wasn't great for reading but it offered color like,"the sun at the beach." How can you go wrong with that?

In case you are hiding under a rock, the New Christmas Season is here: The Mother's Day/Father's Day/Grandparents' Day/Fourth of July Season. The abbreviated name is MoFaGrap Day. It sounds horrible, I know. To avoid the awfulness of this name, treat each holiday separately and start them right with Zero Waste Gifts.

For mom, options abound. May I suggest used books? Some people like gifts shiny and wrapped in shrink wrap. But the gifts you'll find at the used book store may include rare collectibles, out of print items and new releases in near mint condition. My mother devotes her spare time to flowers. I found three flower books in great condition, two of which were sadly out of print.

Speaking of flowers,you can still put together a package of native plants grown locally. Go for the already potted route, or get a bunch of small plants ready to go in the garden.

I want to acknowledge something controversial about myself. I let my cats outside.

They are fairly unique creatures. They stick around my house, going a block away at most. They come when called, stay out for only an hour at a time. But they are cats. While one never kills a thing, and rarely tries, the other has given up synthetic feathers attached to polls in favor of the real thing: birds.

He also happens to like chipmunks, mice and the occasional baby bunny. I am constantly saving shocked creatures from the jaws of my cat.

The killing has ceased since I added bells to their collars, two in fact. And generally they aren't allowed outside during the early morning or dusk when birds are most active. But I know I'm contributing to a problem. I know that while I may slow for all crows and red winged blackbirds nearing my vehicle, my cats do not.

Did you know there was a wetland in Cuba? If you did, I must say I'm impressed. If you didn't, blame it on the U.S. embargo against Cuba and read on.

The Ciénaga de Zapata is considered one of the best preserved wetlands in the Caribbean. But rising temperatures and increasingly harsh hurricanes are threatening its existence. The Zapata wren, rail and sparrow are all native species that don't exist anywhere else. Mangroves and coral reefs also make up the preserve. And from what I've read, it's also home to much of Cuba's wildlife.

Oddly, people seem to also be living in the edges of this wetland, which is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. That in itself isn't so bad, but the increasingly extreme temperatures and conditions make wetland preservation all the more tenuous. With people and their homes and their pollution habits come more problems for the forest.

The director of the Cienaga de Zapata National Park Pablo Bouza says last year fires raged for 45 days damaging 70-percent of the forest.

"The hurricanes leave a lot of accumulated vegetation on the ground, which when it dries from the lack of rain, is converted into fuel for the flames. The fire spreads quickly when the marsh is dry," said Bouza.

Now, the effort is to educate people about the risks and encourage them to move out.

[via Tierramerica]

At the opening of The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan has purchased a cow. He hoped to follow Steer number 534 from his start in a massive feedlot to his end, on a dinner table. Unfortunately, Pollan wasn't able to follow his steer as far as he hoped. But his idea may have had some influence on Scott Ballum, a Brooklyn resident who has decided to follow the chain of his consumption.

His Mission: "A year-long effort to meet the laborers and craftsmen who build what I buy – and put a human face on consumption. For every transaction, there must be a personal connection with someone along the production chain."

That hasn't meant he's given up his Kentucky-brewed Maker's Mark, but he did shake hands with one of the guys who turns the barrels.

From the flat plains of Kansas and the home of Dorothy, comes Paul Klusman, aerospace engineer and green energy advisor extrordinaire. Klusman came to YouTube fame with his video, "An Engineer's Guide to Cats" but his recent film explorations are sure to speak to the love-festing Greenie reading this blog entry right now.

He has tips on how to make carpooling more attractive, and tips on how you might cut down on your need for air conditioning. Klusman doesn't mention shade trees, but I'm sure that will be his next video. Perhaps he'll make a how-to video on welding discarded cell phones into a slide.

My favorite part of these videos is not the silent assistant or the wacky foam board, it's Klusman's apron: classic Kansas. Enjoy Klusman's PSA and remember, Kansas could be the new "green coast."

I was in DC for a business trip last week. Every time I'm there I get a little giddy about the subway. I happen to love people watching and subways. The trouble, however, was that a number of times I needed to make it to a meeting fast. I didn't have time to walk ten blocks to the nearest Metro stop, then wait for a train. If only I'd had a bike to ride to the subway , instead of cabbing it all the way.

Next time I'm there, Smartbike Washington might be my solution. It's a bike rental program sponsored by Clear Channel. The district has paired up with Clear Channel to rent 120 bikes at 10 locations. The idea is pretty simple: A subscriber pays $40 a year for access to a bike for three hours at a time.

Let's say I want to get from Gallery Place to a meeting just beyond the Convention Center but I'm already running late. I would just swipe my Smartbike card, grab a bike, and head over. I can return the bike to any other Smartbike rental location.

I, Ring Madam for the Earth Day Activity Portal, present to you activities around the United States that put you in actual contact with--wait for it-- the EARTH!

Ta Da! Thank you, thank you.

In Utah at the Diamond Fork Youth Forest you and yours can plant willows and shrubs as well as reseed trails. The event takes place on Saturday, April 19th from 9 am until noon.

The 2008 Lincoln Mark LT truck comes with two front seat cigar lighters, leather seats, a compass, chrome bumpers and a 30 gallon gas tank. It gets an estimated 12 miles per gallon in the city. Now I understand why this V8 engine beheamouth of a vehicle goes only three miles an hour in my urban parking ramp. It could run out of gas at any moment! It's also difficult to maneuver a creature that large around a corner designed for a Honda Civic.

Normally, I don't spend much time thinking about cars. But these take up two parking spaces; they are impossible to see around, and there's that wee gas mileage issue.

I ran across a site maintained by the Minnesota Auto Dealers Association. Donttakemytruck.com is maintained to let truck drivers know that stricter regulations have been proposed to limit the sale of trucks and SUVs. A few Minnesota legislators want to adopt California's Low Emission Vehicle Program. The program requires that all fleet vehicles

In the United States it seems we vote with our pocketbook, even if that means we vote on borrowed money. While the supermarket checkout doesn't tally how often we vote for organic milk or refills of soap, companies would like to know whether their green logos are resonating with consumers.

That explains the Buzzback Market Research survey of UK and US consumers on their environmentally friendly habits. Pre-Earth Day they asked about what people buy, what they recycle and what they turn down. It appears that both the lovers of the Queen and the lovers of the Dollar also love energy efficient light bulbs and recycling paper , glass and plastic.

Did I get your attention?

This NPR news story got mine. The journalist reported on a study by the Environmental Working Group that tested a small sample of household pets. These were dogs and cats, and much like studies that show children have higher levels of chemicals like phthalates than adults, this study showed pets have a higher level of multiple household chemicals in their bodies.

Cats had five times the amount of mercury in their systems than people. Overall the animals had 23 times more flame retardant and PFC levels were twice as high in pets than in their human counterparts.

Researchers think the higher levels of mercury are linked to canned seafood cat food. EWG suggests selecting pet foods without preservatives, especially BHA, BHT and ethoxyquin.

While this worries me--I am a deeply devoted cat parent--implications of the findings are potentially far broader. Pets have shorter lives, often develop cancers more easily and could be the proverbial canary in the coal mine of our chemically-treated lives.

EWG suggests avoiding stain-resistant anything, using filtered water, changing pet bedding regularly and vacuuming often.