A World of Products Makes It Easier to Be Green

Three words encapsulate the environmental movement:

Reduce, reuse, recycle.

They are words easy enough for children to learn and then hound their parents into complying with the idea behind them: to reduce the amount of wasteful products we use in our homes, reuse items instead of discarding them and, when we do have to throw them away, send them to the recycling center rather than the local landfill.

In these times of extreme correctness, even the way we run our households is under scrutiny. To help us save the world from wanton waste and conspicuous consumption of nonrenewable resources, manufacturers have developed easy-to-use products that require little effort from us, beyond plunking down cash.

A shower head here, reusable grocery bags there, and pretty soon you’ve saved enough water and trees to hold your head high on the next Earth Day. Saving resources also often means saving money, with lower water and gas bills.

There are plenty of outlets from which to purchase environmentally correct household items. Real Goods, a retailer in Northern California, is doing a booming mail-order business with its earth-friendly merchandise, from solar showers and green diapers to organic cotton clothing.

John Schaffer created the company in 1978 out of necessity. He was living in a commune with no electricity and had no place to buy solar products or rechargeable batteries.

His company grew from providing homestead supplies for the back-to-the-land movement to supplying products for suburban families. “All of a sudden in the ‘90s everybody wanted to be green,” he said.

It is not uncommon now to go into a supermarket and find several brands of recycled paper and plastic products, practically unheard of a decade ago. Some stores are using recycled plastic for their bags, and some reward customers for reusing plastic or other bags (Ralphs pays 3 cents and Albertson’s pays 5 cents per bag when used for the next purchases).

The practice of bringing bags to a store long the norm in Europe and other nations has created a whole new industry here. Stephen Katz, founder of UnWrapped Inc. in Concord, Mass., has a line of reusable grocery and produce bags made of mesh that are sold in specialty food shops, such as Mrs. Gooch’s in Tustin.

Katz made the bags after working years in the recycling business. “Recycling is great, but we as a society have to move into the realm of reduce-and-reuse philosophy,” he said.

It takes several steps for a plastic bag to be recycled, he added. It has to be sorted, transported, then broken down and made into another usable item--pop bottles can be made into T-shirts, park benches and ceiling tiles. With reusable bags, the greatest output is an occasional spin in the washing machine. And air-drying, of course.

Katz’s bags cost about $3. Canvas bags can be found at most grocery stores and can cost anywhere from $3 to $12.

If you just can’t give up plastic grocery bags, you can at least reuse them. A swish of soapy water is all it takes to clean plastic produce bags. Then hang them on the clothes line or a drying rack. This treatment also works for closeable sandwich bags.

Racks (about $12) are usually made of wood and have room to dry several bags at once. Counter-top models can be ordered from Real Goods ([800] 762-7325) and Seventh Generation ([800] 456-1177), another catalog of earth-friendly products.

It wouldn’t do to clean plastic bags with cleansers that introduce harmful waste into the environment, especially since there are safer cleaning products available.

Simple Green was one of the first cleaners on the market to be carried by the major grocery store chains, but other companies such as Seventh Generation, Nature Clean, Oasis, Planet and Ecover are making inroads with household cleaners, furniture polishes, dishwashing liquids, floor waxes, laundry detergents and window cleaners.

The cost of green products is usually higher than those of conventional household-cleaning products, but as demand for safer cleaning products goes up, retailers say, the prices will come down.

“We’re finding that people are willing to pay a bit more for a product that is better for the environment as long as the quality is high,” said Ken Van Der Veen, manager of sales for Orange County-based Ecover.

Van Der Veen added that the natural ingredients used in Ecover’s products are becoming easy to get, which in turn is bringing down the product prices.

If the conservation of trees is a concern, there are a number of recycled paper products on the market. Or better yet, revert to cloth napkins instead of paper napkins and towels.

Water is one of the easiest resources to waste and one of the simplest for the homeowner to conserve. Simple changes, such as turning off the faucet while brushing your teeth, can save gallons of water a year.

Switching to a low-flow shower head can save the average household hundreds of gallons of water in a year. There are even models that have a switch so water can be off while you wash and turned on again to rinse without having to adjust the temperature. This type of shower head is common in Europe and can be purchased at most hardware stores for about $14.

Toilets traditionally use 5 to 7 gallons with each flush, but new models use only 1 gallon. Many water districts in the county are offering low-flush toilets to customers for $40, according to Charlie Cron, general manager of the Santiago County Water District, which serves Silverado Canyon.

“These are plain white, no-frills toilets that will save a lot of money for the consumer over the years,” he said.

The toilet retrofit program ends Wednesday. Call your local water company for information.

If a new toilet is not an option, most water districts offer toilet and shower conservation kits that include a plastic bag to fill with water and place in a tank to lower the amount of water being used.

Don’t use a brick or other dissolvable material in a toilet’s water tank, Cron warned. Eventually the brick will start to break down, sending sediment out with each flush that might clog plumbing.

Other ways to save water are to have your car cleaned at a carwash, all of which are required by state law to use recycling water systems; water your grass no more than once a week (or only when it needs it); and avoid washing patios, driveways or sidewalks.

“Please use a broom for those tasks,” Cron said.

Lighting is another area where money and natural resources can be conserved. The cost to light your home accounts for up to 10% of the average residential electrical bill.

Fluorescent lighting is more efficient than incandescent light, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. If you replace incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent lighting, you can save up to $50 over the life of the bulb. Where the average incandescent bulb lasts six months, the EPA estimates a fluorescent bulb lasts six years.

Simple solar lighting is also available without having to invest in an elaborate system. There is a variety of small, outdoor lights--such as those that illuminate paths--that run on solar-charged batteries. They shut off automatically at dawn and come on at dusk. The Pagoda solar light offered in the Real Goods catalog has a three-year rechargeable battery and costs $79.

Changing to more efficient appliances can also save energy. If you’re in the market for a new refrigerator, water heater, washing machine or dishwasher, check out the green machines on the market. Southern California Edison offers savings bonds to people who turn in energy-wasting appliances.

Tankless water heaters from Europe are gaining popularity here. They turn on when water flow is detected and heat water as it passes through the heat exchange. Because the heater provides hot water as it is being used, it never runs out. The system costs about the same as regular water heaters but saves money because the unit is not constantly on.

“An analogy I use is that it’s like having a car that’s running 24 hours a day just in case you want to get up at 3 in the morning to drive to the store,” Schaffer said.

In the high-tech realm, there are environmentally correct cockroach killers. The Zapper lures cockroaches into its disc with vegetable protein tablets, where they are zapped with 6,000 volts of electricity ($49, available in the Real Goods catalog). There are no toxic smells or sprays.

There are many green products available--from solar lawn mowers to rip-cord face shavers. It all depends on much money you’re willing to spend and how willing you are to change old habits.