Planet: Green Cleaning Products
Shopping at my local grocery store usually proves to be a time of endless label reading frustration. I can’t find products that are easily identifiable as eco-friendly, and this is never truer then when I am attempting to find cleaning products. Luckily, and I have to say to my utter shock and amazement, my grocer carries “Planet” cleaning products.
Now just to be clear, I live in the opposite of a metropolis. There are roughly 25,000 people in my town, and we have a total of 3 grocery stores, all dismal on a good day. The fact that we have cleaning products available specifically developed to be green, available locally makes my life easier as it lessens the requirement of a 60 mile, carbon spewing trip to the nearest large town in addition to saving my eyesight from the tiny lettering on product labels.
Planet, my joyful surprise, makes a line of biodegradable, non-animal tested, non-toxic, hypoallergenic cleaning products including dishwashing detergent, laundry detergent and an all purpose spray cleaner. They biodegrade up to 70% within a single month (28 days actually) but reportedly last for several years if kept in a cool, dry storage area. The dish detergent (my first purchase in the Planet line) doubles as an excellent dog wash (I have 3, spoiled dogs) and cleans dishes as well as Dawn, my former detergent.
The only downside, and it is listed hidden in the FAQ on the Planet website, is that you can’t keep any diluted Planet products around, due to the fact that they biodegrade so quickly. This means that if you use it on the road, camping for instance, you have to pack the whole bottle, which might prove slightly cumbersome.
The joy of not having to drive an hour to find green cleaning products is probably driving this analysis, however, that aside, the Planet line of products is a great way for the average consumer to make a difference in an area that can prove maddening to the uninitiated.
Batteries…to go!
I absolutely hate it when I’m on vacation, taking pictures, and my camera starts to beep at me that I’m running out of batteries. I always mean to carry extras with me, but somehow between packing the rest of my crazy electronics (cell phone, laptop, ipod), and my clothes, I never remember. Well today I stumbled upon something that can help me keep my camera clicking and at the same time reduce the waste created from throwing away used batteries.
They’re called USBcell and the concept is absolutely brilliant. Essentially they’re just batteries you flip the top of (similarly to a Zippo lighter) and plug into a USB port to recharge. That’s it. Simple but exceptional, like sliced bread. Knowing how many batteries I go through in remotes, cameras, and other personal electronics, utilizing these widely in my personal life would reduce my hazardous waste considerably. And considering the particularly potent chemicals at work in conventional batteries, changing over to rechargeable batteries has a particularly high eco-help ratio. More on the problem with throwing out batteries here. 
Currently USBcell makes batteries in AA, AAA, and 9v models, and have a series of cell phone batteries with new models being released regularly. They also have a series of “fashion batteries” in development, but I’m totally unclear on their purpose, as I’ve never needed a pink battery before, and don’t expect to in the near future. The batteries last about as long as regular batteries, and can plug into virtually any powered USB port you encounter, though how much power it is pulling determines the length of time it will take the battery to charge.
The USB plug feature makes them especially attractive for travel, as I’m frequently out of range of an outlet, but rarely out of range of my laptop. It also simplifies international travel, as I only need to have one adapter for my computer, and can forget packing one for a battery charger.
The only downside to these batteries is that I know nothing about their manufacturing process and whether that has a higher impact upon the environment than regular battery manufacturing. The company website indicates that because the batteries are NiMH versus NiCad, they are safer, but that doesn’t take the manufacturing into account. Also, while they indicate that the backing of the packaging is recyclable, they’re still using less-than-eco-friendly plastic for the cover.
Overall the concept is so good it overcomes most shortcomings, with the proviso that there is no way to make batteries “good” for the environment, just less bad. And because the USBcell batteries are recyclable (as are most batteries), there is the potential that they can have even less impact over time. All in all, while these will not single handedly change the nature of my world, they do hold the capactity to both help me with a technology issue, as well as assist me in offsetting my negative impact on the environment, both marks of good eco-technology.
Printing Solar Cells
Silicon electronics are made in a method similar to developing a photograph. You have a certain material (a silicon substrate) that you layer with a chemical that reacts to UV light. You shine something like an overhead projection onto the chip and the silicon you want to keep stays while the parts you want gone dissolve. The process is fantastic for our ever-shrinking phones and electronic devices, but the substrate has to be very pure (down to the atom) which is hard to do for something the size of a window. It’s also a time and money consuming process, 1 Hour Photo, this ain’t.
Circuit printing has been around for a while now, but hasn’t really been able to make any major traction outside of LCDs. It works more like a printing press than a darkroom. One company, NanoSolar, is using the process to make affordable solar cells. They’ve sold their first Mega-Watt to a German power plant a couple of days ago and are pretty sure this is the beginning of a new era in solar.
With backers like Serge and Larry, NanoSolar may be going places, but they’ve spent the last 5 years just getting it to work. NanoSolar uses a semiconductor called CIGS instead of silicon. CIGS stands for Copper Indium Gallium Selenide. It’s also a bit experimental, and NanoSolar is the first out the door for this kind of solar panel.
NanoSolar’s cells won Pop Sci’s “Innovation of the Year” award and you can see a glimpse of how it all works in their writeup.
Don’t expect solar prices to drop instantly, however. Remember that these are the same processes that flat panel TVs and monitors use. It was a number of years before the technological kinks were worked out and product yields were acceptable. NanoSolar’s CEO Martin Roscheisen is confident that in time they’ll be able to provide energy for less than $1/Watt. That’s a bold statement for an energy source that is struggling with massive up-front costs. Don’t forget to multiply that by the 25-year warranty which at a permanently sunny equator gives you 110 KWh for every dollar you spend.
Green Medical Supplies
Ok, so there is a bit of weirdness when the first blog post of a blog about environmentally friendly technology, consumer products and building materials is actually about the lack of an appropriate product/solution, but it’s my blog (along with two others) so I can write about what I want, right?
It started out with me noticing how much waste comes out of the home supply medical industry. You know, the guys and gals who bring home-bound people the stuff they need to keep them alive? My father has COPD and requires home oxygen, so I get to see a lot of the stuff that they produce. One of the things I noticed recently is how much waste is generated, specifically in terms of the plastic materials that the supplies are wrapped in. Seriously, everything is wrapped in the stuff.
There are the 12 plastic water bottles (per month) that provide humidity through the plastic air hoses (resupplied monthly), both of which come wrapped in plastic, in a cardboard box, wrapped in plastic tape! Now I’ve not gone through and checked the specific type of plastic used to wrap each supply to see how bad it really is, but given the sheer amount, I expect it to be bad (and I will check). But clearly, to me at least, there has got to be a better way of keeping materials sterile than just wrapping them in more airtight plastic. At least something that doesn’t generate quite as much waste. Or, if there is no better way, there should at least be a way to get them in some kind of better plastic.
I did a bit of searching around on the net, and I couldn’t find much excepting this blog-post looking at the new types of plastic being used for drip-bags and tubing. It doesn’t really address packaging issues. This doesn’t really help with my problem, because it’s talking about making stuff sterile enough to put in a landfill, defeating the purpose of limiting waste, and everything else including this place that sells “environmentally friendly medical supplies,” really doesn’t seem to address the waste issue (and apparently only sells conventional medical supplies).
Part of the problem may be that I live in the boonies so I get what I can get, but I’m not convinced that this isn’t a problem without a solution. Maybe I’m just not looking hard enough. I don’t have enough time to create a solution in terms of starting a company, nor do I have a lot of time to spend looking for products, as I’m sure many of you don’t. So some entrepreneurial spirit out there should fill this niche, or find an extant company, and then tell us about it.
