As each of us strives to exist in harmony with nature by maintaining a green lifestyle, many of our daily actions project beyond our personal benefit as we help sustain our environment.

Perpetuating the green living philosophy by finding new ways to enhance our interactions with the natural environment leaving a postive legacy in our wake.

This ideal is best communicated in a quote by Albert Pine (19th Century English author):

“What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us. What we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.”

So the next time you take action on any green lifestyle initiative, remember, not only are you helping others and the environment, you are also creating a piece of your legacy as well …

I recently visited a colleague’s blog site and read a post triggered by Michael Jackson’s untimely death due to cardiac arrest.  The post addressed the issues associated with people, their lifestyles, health background and heart disease.

One of the key points made by the author focused on the relationship between lifestyle and poor health choices as being a major factor leading to heart disease.  Part of the poor choices relates to the types and quantities of food we eat and the manner in which it can impact our health.

Fast Food = Bad and Regular Food = Good, right?

Though no one questions the potential health threat associated with eating processed foods, especially fast foods; what about the fruits, veggies, poultry and meat produced on factory farms or derived from genetically modified or altered organisms?

Organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have already started to assess these problems due to higher risk of allergic reactions and lower nutritional values with food from these sources.  It will be interesting hear about the findings of these organizations.

In the meantime, two questions arose as I pondered the nature of these food sources and their potential health impacts:

• If man deliberately alters the genetic code to create a new organism for a given purpose (higher yield, more resistant, flavor, etc.), can this new organism really be considered natural?  Part of the reason this question instantly popped in my mind pertains to my background in geology.  The most basic type of Earth material is a mineral which by definition must be natural thus created via the Earth’s natural processes.  If we create a pseudo-mineral in the lab, it is not considered a true mineral.  From my perspective, if we genetically alter an organism for a specific purpose, we have effectively done the same thing and therefore that organism (or food) should not be considered natural!
• How long will it be before a new type of food processing facility pops up with a catchy marketing slogan like you see below!

Soylent Green Anyone?

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What is Soylent Green?

Now there is some … “food for thought”

A podcast with my thoughts on people’s perception of the word “chemical” (be patient, it may take a moment to load):

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Right click to download the audio MP3 file: Meaning of Chemical

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Interesting question isn’t it?

Read the short post below and listen to the podcast above and see why I believe a lot of people really don’t know the answer!

Many people seem to think that if household cleaning products (or other products for that matter) contain chemicals, they must be toxic, unsafe or not earth-friendly.  Part of the issue again comes down to a combination of multiple meanings for a term, in this case chemical, as well as confusion about chemicals that might be in various products.

The fundamental meaning of the word chemical relates to the fact that all matter is made of the chemical elements.  Therefore the only time there would not be chemicals present if there was an absolute vacuum.  We could not survive in an absolute vacuum!

Everything around us is chemical.

The air is a mixture of nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, carbon dioxide, etc.

Water is H₂O and we can’t live without it!

Arsenic is a naturally occurring chemical element we can pretty much live without!

Every material in the environment around us including our household cleaning products consists of chemical compounds and nothing, other than an absolute vacuum can be 100% chemical free ….

Keep these facts in mind as you listen to the podcast and please leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts!

Yesterday’s post posed a simple question about baking soda … is it natural?

After providing a little background information about the composition and sources of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate), it was clear that there is a considerable amount of processing taking place in both the older Solvay process as well as the current processes to produce baking soda from the mineral trona.

But is it really the amount of processing that determines whether or not something is natural?

Let’s consider a few facts and see what we uncover!

According to the American Heritage Dictionary online, the basic definition for the word “natural” as an adjective is:

“Present in or produced by nature; and as used in Biology – Not produced or changed artificially; not conditioned”.

Based on this definition, my understanding is that for something to be natural it must either be the raw material supplied by the Earth system or a material existing in the natural material that can be extracted or refined without changing it.

So when we use a raw material directly, say salt as a preservative; nahcolite (mineral form of sodium bicarbonate) as baking soda; or fine grit mineral as an abrasive, those materials are indeed natural.

The other case I see as being natural is when we extract or refine a substance to purify without adding anything to the product such as extraction or refining of essential oils and even extracting components existing in a mineral (so long as nothing new is added).

Thinking back to the two processes to produce baking soda, when the Solvay process was being used to produce baking soda (which it really is not today), baking soda was essentially manufactured and not natural.

In the case of processing trona (Na₃CO₃(HCO₃) – 2H₂O), since the mineral contains NaHCO₃ this is really a matter of extracting sodium bicarbonate from trona.

Because it is essentially an extraction process, today’s baking soda is indeed “natural”.

Do you agree?

A simple title isn’t it?

If you do a web search for that phrase, you will find link after link touting baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) is an agent for natural cleaning, skin care, tooth care and the list goes on and on ….

The more I thought about it however, something didn’t quite seem to fit …

Part of the issue relates to where most baking soda comes from, while the other is due to an understanding of the meaning of “natural” when discussing these types of substances.

Is there a “natural” form of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda)?

Now I am totally aware sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO₃), a.k.a. baking soda, does exist in large quantities within Mother Earth’s system in the form of a mineral called nahcolite.

Even though nahcolite is the natural form of sodium bicarbonate, is it used as the source of baking soda?

Baking Soda (Sodium Bicarbonate) Production ….

Historically, baking soda was manufactured using the Solvay process (developed in the mid nineteenth century) by processing calcium carbonate (usually limestone) with salt brine (sodium chloride) that had been saturated with ammonia.  Other products derived from this process includes sodium carbonate (Na₂CO₃) also known as soda ash and calcium chloride (CaCl₂).  This Solvay system is definitely a chemical manufacturing process for producing baking soda!

After the discovery of substantial deposits of another sodium carbonate mineral called trona (Na₃CO₃(HCO₃) – 2H₂O), the use of the Solvay process fell off by 1980.  The shift away from using the Solvay process was two-fold:

1)      it was less costly to mine and process trona to produce baking soda and soda ash;

2)      hypothetically, processing trona is more “earth-friendly”.

Like nahcolite, trona is an inorganic, evaporate mineral forming as mineral-laden waters evaporate away causing the chemicals in solution (like Na⁺, Ca²⁺, HCO₃^-, CO₃^2-) to recombine and precipitate out forming beds of new minerals.  Significant deposits of trona and nahcolite were formed as ancient lakes (>50 million years ago) evaporated away in parts of western Wyoming and northwestern Colorado.

The trona deposits of this region are now the targets of several mines and the companies produce more than 17 million tons of trona (and a few hundred thousand tons of nahcolite) each year from the Wyoming deposits alone.

More than 95% of the baking soda and virtually all soda ash used in the U. S. each year is derived by processing trona (per the Wyoming Mining Association).

Since trona (Na₃CO₃(HCO₃) – 2H₂O) is not pure sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO₃) it has to be processed to derive soda ash (sodium carbonate or Na₂CO₃) first then baking soda (NaHCO3) is produced from the soda ash by adding CO₂.

So technically speaking, the bulk of the baking soda we buy in the grocery store is a material that is produced by first mining the mineral trona which is then processed into soda ash (Na₂CO₃) which is subsequently mixed with more CO₂ to finally produce baking soda (sodium bicarbonate).

Does this sound like a completely natural product to you?

To me it seems like there is an awful lot of “production” going on when making baking soda!

“I read the news today, oh boy” is the opening line from the Beatles song “A Day in the Life”. But yesterday it went well beyond “oh boy” when I was left dazed and confused by the stupidity in the news.

I mean there are some days when I read articles in the news and I just sit shaking my head mainly due to all the negativity. Yesterday’s shaking however, is an example of stupidity centering on an issue continuing to persist because of the news and questionable advertising.

The story from lovely old England was partly about the bottled water companies trying to wage war against tap water dues to falling sales.

Now I realize the story was merely reporting the state of bottled water industry trying to regain lost sales through advertising and marketing but sheesh!

The piece noted one of the tactics used by the bottled water industry was to attack the degrading water quality of municipal tap water.

Although some municipal water systems may have degraded water quality, those systems (at least in this country) are constantly monitored (not the case for the bottled water industry in most instances) and still have to make minimum water quality standards as set by the Safe Water Drinking Act (again here in the U.S.).

Does that really warrant spending $5.00 to $8.00 per gallon (even more in some places) for bottled water versus a few cents per gallon (unfiltered) and maybe up to $0.25 per gallon (if filtered) from our tap?

Not in my mind!

A few other issues with bottled water include:

• Greater than 25% of bottled water providers here in the U.S. are not from remote “pristine” springs but are actually filtered municipal water;
• There are many cases where bottled water quality has been determined to be degraded;
• Bottled water companies also process the water prior to bottling;
• Tap water is delivered via an existing piping system usually driven by gravity; bottled water has to be packaged and shipped to end user (often with several intermediate stops);
• Bottle water comes in bottles (usually plastic, sometimes glass) with most of them being discarded as trash; &
• It takes extra energy and resources to make the bottles (most of which end up as trash) and ship them as noted above.

So please ….. GIVE ME A BREAK!

In what alternate reality does anyone think bottled water is better than tap water?  (Assuming not in an under-developed country of course) ….

Only in the alternate reality of the news, advertising and marketing.