There are a number of alternatives to vinyl shower curtains, but non of them are an easy home run. PVC (polyvinyl chloride) has been shown to emit over 100 toxic chemicals during the first month you bring it home says a new report from the Center for Health, Environment & Justice. Some large stores like Target and Bed Bath and Beyond sell less-toxic vinyl curtains, that are PVC free, but we weren’t convinced that these were truly safe. Also, there didn’t seem to be a good way to recycle or dispose of the vinyl curtains, so we went in search of a deeper green curtain.

Bed Bath and Beyond (there is one near our house) sells Nylon curtains, but I still wasn’t convinced that nylong was fully recyclable or safe to manufacture. So we headed off to our local Eugene “Green Store” to find the perfect eco shower curtain. The “Green Store” had both organic cotton and hemp curtains available. The hemp curtains purported to be “mildew resistant” because of the natural characteristics of hemp. Unfortunately, the hemp curtain also cost close to $100 dollars, so we decided to go with the white cotton curtain.

We installed this curtain around Sept 8th and have been using it since. I have dumped it in the wash once since then. With three people showering daily in our house the curtain spends quite a bit of time wet and is starting to show signs of mildew again. The curtain cost $35, about $20 more than the inexpensive vinyl curtains available from the big retailers. If the curtain remains durable for a significant amount of time I will consider it $20 well invested. In the upcoming months I will keep you updated!

photo credit: evelynishere

The good
Green This! is an excellent primer on toxins in the home. The book begins with Deidre Imus’s own commitment to reducing her toxic burden and then presents the facts behind such topics as indoor air pollution and health problems caused by environmental toxins in the home. green This! then takes a room-by-room approach to cleaning, providing green alternative to cleaning the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, living areas, and the laundry room.

The book is punctuated by brief but interesting (and hair-raising) “toxic interruptions” in which Deidre Imus presents facts about chemicals in everyday products. For example, she warns readers about phenol, “a known mutagen and suspected carcinogen”:

Oral exposure to large amounts of phenol has been linked to anorexia, reduced fetal body weight, abnormal development, and growth retardation.

Phenol can also interfere with the ability of the blood to carry oxygen and cause bronchitis to develop. . . Despite these perils, phenols are used in many different consumer products: throat lozenges, ointments, ear and nose drops, and mouthwashes. Household cleaners that may contain phenols include disinfectants and all=purpose cleaners, furniture polishes and waxes, metal polishes and cleaners, and laundry detergents.

The resources section at the end of the book provides a glossary of terms used in the book, places to purchase green cleaning products, a glossary of chemicals found in conventional cleaning products, tips on reading labels, and a note on sources of more information on the issues raised by the book.

100% of the author’s profits from the book benefit the family’s Cattle Ranch for Kids with Cancer.

The (potentially) bad
The book isn’t written for the do-it-yourselfer, in that there are relatively few recipes for environmentally friendly cleaning products you can make at home, and you may already know of some of these recipes–for example, using salt, warm water, and lemon juice to clean copper and brass. Instead of providing recipes for cleaning everything in the home, Imus offers a resources section at the back of the book that lists companies that manufacture green cleaning products–including, of course, her own company.

A few reviewers at Amazon.com have found the book to be preachy, but I found myself nodding along with Imus’s concerns. Sure, there were a few moments where I felt Imus was a bit brusque (e.g., on microwave ovens: “I don’t approve of them, but if you have one and inist on using it. . .”). If you’re already on board with the green movement and you can overlook these occasional scoldings, your reaction likely will be similar to mine: when there’s good information to be had in a book, the author’s celebrity (and accompanying occasional arrogance) means little to me.

Book-buying advice
Put aside any hard feelings you may have toward Imus’s family (she’s married to the former shock jock Don Imus), and purchase the book for yourself or for friends and family. Consider it an investment in your health or theirs.

Purchase at Amazon.com.

Purchase at independent bookseller Powells.com (e-books also available at this link).

(A note about book reviews: At Green West Magazine we seek to find and review books of interest to our readers. The links we place at the bottom of each review are affiliate links; we receive a very small percentage of each sale price from our bookseller partners. That said, our reviews are 100% honest; if we don’t like a book, we’ll say so.

While you’re welcome to purchase the book at your favorite bookseller, if you enjoy our book reviews and would like to see them continue, and if you do decide to purchase the books we review, we’d appreciate it if you’d do so by clicking on the links above, both of which usually offer to both new and used copies of the books. Many thanks!)

This past Sunday, Jeff Opdyke penned his “Love & Money” column for the Wall Street Journal on “The (Too) High Price of Being Green.” Opdyke’s lament about the high buy-in costs of going green around the house struck a chord with this suburban mama:

I know I risk angering a lot of people in the green movement who argue that environmentalism is about doing right by the environment, not your wallet. It’s about thinking broadly, about the future we’re passing on to our children. It’s about the planet’s survival.

Philosophically, I’m with you. But philosophy doesn’t pay my bills.

It’s one thing for California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to rework his Hummer to run on zero-emission hydrogen. For him—for many high-profile celebrities now painting themselves green—it isn’t a financial inconvenience. In fact, it could help them financially if it boosts their careers.

But it makes a huge difference for the average family to dump thousands of extra dollars into a hybrid vehicle. After all, when you’re trying to save for retirement and your kids’ college tuition, when you’re trying to pay off the mortgage, the car note and student loans, when you’re swamped by the everyday costs of life, green sometimes just means a deeper shade of red in your checkbook.

If the WSJ link above converts to a subscribers-only page, you can find the entire column republished at Green Envy, whose author takes issue with some of Opdyke’s calculations and reasoning.

Treehugger suggests less expensive, everyday ways to live greenly. An excerpt:

The most environmentally conscious acts are often the cheapest. Like putting on a sweater rather than turning on, or up, the heating. Compact fluoro lighting saves money in the longer term. Owning and using a bicycle for city travel instead of a car. Catching public transit instead of paying a car’s loan, insurance, maintenance, fuel, registration, etc. Buying secondhand, preloved goods, in lieu of new resource-intensive stryofoam wrapped or blister pack clad goods. Taking holidays locally rather than flying off to seemingly exotic locales (why fly to the Maldives if you can overland to Baja?) Placing a brick or weighted bottle into your toilet cistern, so it flushes less drinking water down the drain. Buying direct from farmers markets before visiting the supermarket. Reducing meat consumption, in favour of vegetables, fruit, grains and legumes. Not buying wasteful ‘packaged’ water, but refilling your own bottle with (the often more pure) tap water. Volunteering for your local conservation or environment group.

Drawing on the new Yahoo! Green portal, Trent of The Simple Dollar lists more “ways that going green saves a ton of money”.

What about you? What’s your best tip for saving money while making the greatest pro-environment impact?