Share 'N' Voice: Hair products

Hello Ladies! It's obvious that all of us have hair and lots of it. The picture below looks like mine before I battle it with a curling iron.......Yes, I know it's scary; that's why I wear hats a lot : )

As I was washing my hair with my original shampoo, "Bed Head" down the drain, our class got me to thinking more about this product. How do the chemical in that shampoo affect my health, and how does it affect the water system that I'm dumping it into? 

My rating was a 7 from the eye opener website that we did in class. Octooxynol-40 is the chemical in this product that can cause the following

Endocrine disruption, Allergies/immunotoxicity, Organ system toxicity (non-reproductive), Multiple, additive exposure sources, Ecotoxicology, Irritation (skin, eyes, or lungs),

I've tried the brand "organix" shampoo from Target, and it just wasn't enough of a powerful weapon to taime the Shannon fro on top of my head, so I gave up on organic shampoo. (the organix products do have good scores on the eye opener website) 

I was roaming through the Whole-Foods Co-op and found this on sale!!!! I decided to give it a try. After reading the ingredients list, I figured that it had to be better than "Bed Head." By using this shampoo, my rating went from a 7 (Bed Head) to a 5. 

To my surprise, this product is amazing. It leaves my hair looking shinier and healthier than my original shampoo that was a concoction of toxins. I even got a lot of hair compliments on the day that I used this. 

Organic Shampoo and Conditioner seem to expensive for you? 

Not to worry! Here's a tip that I learned at the salon I worked at to conserve on Shampoo and Conditioner so you can spread the dollars you spend. 

1) Start out small: With Shampoo, you really only need enough for your roots, because that's where the oil builds up. The shampoo from your roots will wash the rest of your hair when it's running down your hair when you're rinsing. 

2) Conditioner, Start with the ends and work your way up.

Think of your fingers as combs with conditioner on them to get out the snarls. If your hair is snarly like mine, just do a small section at once. Once you get the end snarls out, work your way up to the scalp. 

I was amazed the first time I did this, because my during my whole life I've used a giant pile of conditioner and still felt like it's never been enough. Give it a shot! 

Share 'N' Voice- "Trash Audit"

Hello Ladies!

"UMD initiates new composting program," was the title of an article in the Statesmen on campus. In the picture, the girl that is throwing away her compostable coffee cup is the leader of the Environmental Task Force that I'm on for MPIRG. She and I as well as others did a trash audit of what recyclables are being thrown in the regular trash bins. Suprisingly enough, the biggest amount of recyclables being wasted wasn't aluminum cans, water bottles, or paper. It's was the compostable products from the UMD coffee shop!!!!


This is a picture that was collected from out trash audit, containing things only from the coffee shop. One thing I learned is that the plastic cups for smoothies and iced coffee drinks are also compostable! I think that's just amazing that human beings are smart enough to find a way to make plastic compostable.

The Statesmen mentioned that, "in 2009, the coffee shop was estimated to give out roughly around 250,000 disposable cups per year." Let me emphasize that this was cups alone! The coffee shop switched to 100% biodegradable cups and lids, but they're  compostable and need a bin to be thrown in that's designated for composting. Not only are the cups and lids biodegradeable through composting but so are the cutlery and plates!

I used to thing that biodegradable-compostable products could do their environmental benefits by just breaking down in the garbage landfills......NOT TRUE. There is a method that composting follows and it requires action on our part to throw these things in the rights bins, so the people that compost them can take care of the rest of the process. For the coffee cups, lids, cutlery, plastic looking cups, and plates in this case, they need to be put into the new big yellow bucket outside of the coffee shop in order to produce the environmental benefits they were designed to! 

Message for this blog: Put coffee shop compostable products in the yellow bin outside the coffee shop.


We could save up to 250,000 cups alone from a land fill! 

Share 'N' voice: GASO & Kirby Clean Air Act Tabling

Hi Dee Ho bloggers! What events can you attend this week to help out the environment? Theses events below are about 5 min from our classrooms, and can take less than 3 min of your time to make a difference.

With our busy life schedules of being a student, I figured that I would mention ways for everyone to get involved for environmental health on campus! Come join me in Kirby on these two separate dates listed below to show support by filling out a post card to be sent to Klobuchar, or win prizes at the Great American Smoke Out.

Wednesday the 16th
Who: MPIRG
What: getting people to call Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken with a proposed script on the Clean Air Act. 
Why: They are both have voted in favor to protect this act in preliminary voting, but they still have to vote on other measures regarding this. The battle isn't over yet, and we need to send them a clear message of what we as voters want; breaths of fresh air. I know I personally like cancer free lungs. Last week, I think we got something like 400 post cards signed? Don't quote me on that but it was a lot!

AGAIN...WE ARE HAVING PEOPLE CALL AMY KLOBUCHAR. YOU DON'T HAVE TO KNOW WHAT TO SAY....WE GIVE YOU A SCRIPT

Thursday Nov 17th is the Great American Smoke Out!
When: 11-2pm
Where: Kriby in front of book stores
Objectives:

• Get current smokers to trade in their tobacco products, quit cold turkey, and get a cold turkey sub in return.
• Educate all students about the new Campus Smoking Enforcement policy. If people are caught smoking on campus they have to pay a $25 fee and take an online moodle class on smoking and health issues. If they don't take this class they have a hold on their account. (I stopped at Doughnuts with the cops on campus today and asked them about this. They are dishing out the fees, so we're trying to spread the word to students so they can change before hand. 
• If you're not a smoker, enter your name in a drawing to win a $25 gift card to the UMD store.
• SMOKING CESSATION help!

By working with SHAC and the American Lung Association, I've learned that the people that continue to smoke on campus affect our environment more that we know. When people are smoking outside, where do they normally stand? They stand right outside the door, so the ventilation system sucks up the 4,000 chemicals they expel. They also bring in those chemicals on their clothing and skin because the chemicals don't just magically go away. They are dragging in things like arsenic, cyanide, tar, etc with them for us to breathe. As we sit in class, the people that smoke outside the door and that sit next to us are transferring chemicals to us whether we want them or not. Each time we inhale puffs of smoke or can smell the tobacco scent on someone else the toxins add up enough to count as if we were smoking cigarettes too! 

For health education, getting people to change doesn't help by getting our hate on towards the smokers. We need to motivate and encourage them to change since quitting smoking is harder to quit than heroine (proven). If they won't take the motivation they can take the fee, because 12% of students have asthma issues that get exacerbated by second hand smoke, and we all want to breathe air that doesn't have cancerous chemicals in them. 

Enforcing these policies will also cut down on pollution. When you walk outside, play the game how many cigarette butts are on the ground. If people are too afraid to smoke on campus due to fees, there's a less of a change to litter. That's the beauty of policy change. 

Share 'N' Voice- http://duluthenergy.org/

Hello guys, 

Unless your homeless at this moment (which I know some students sometimes result to) we all have a a roof over our head and four walls that support it. With the privilege of having a house, many of us have furnaces to heat the home, faucets to bring us water, and building support to keep the heat/air conditioning in the house. THIS COMES AT A PRICE when not being efficient on how we use our resources. 

DEEP stands for Duluth Energy Efficiency Program. 

This is a program that analyzes one's living area, or other buildings in need and figures out how to be more efficient  so we don't have to pay sky rocketing water and heating bills. In my previous posts for Read 'N' Seed on the water crisis in America, it was mentioned that low power faucets could save tons of water! How many of us want to research what faucets to get, or how to see if my windows are leaking heat? I would if I had the time. That's where DEEP comes in! 

Deep will come to your home and check over everything and tell you how to change things that are costing you money and teach you how to be more environmentally friendly. This Deep website lays it all out. 

The thing I love the most about this program, is that it is available to people with all different income levels. You can also eligible for up to $2,500 in rebates. That means you can get money towards a new furnace, dishwasher, faucet etc. 

I'm volunteering for the American Lung Association, and Jill who is in charge of me introduced me to this. They had DEEP come to their house to do a house Audit. The program showed them ways to keep heat from escaping through their windows and ventilation, they learned what light bulbs to put in, and they got money for a new efficient furnace that will save them even more money in the future. Above all, it helps the environment, so this is a win win situation. 

Stay tuned for more Greenmachine

Welcome to GreenMachine by Shannon F

Hey eco Guys and Gals! I'm Shannon Flaherty and I'm so glad you could make it to my blog!

This blog is going to be about the things we chose to put in our bodies as fuel. This includes food and water. My Read 'n' Seed is on Aqua Shock: The Water Crisis in America so there will be ample information on water: what are the current issues with it, how that affects agriculture, and how we can change to conserve and provide clean water. I'll also be reading "The Food Revolution" to give information on the food that water grows for us to keep living. One specific quote by Hippocrates motivated me to study the relationship between man and food in terms of health. He said, "let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food." I know this hasn't been America's strongest point: being the fast food nation, but we are already making efforts to go back to our grass roots. Our mothers said urged us to drink water instead of pop and eat our greens, but this blog is taking it further than that. I'm on a mission to motivate people to turn into GreenMachines. 

There are 5 possible types of posts on my blog. They include:

1. Advocacy Project
2. Eye Openers
3. Reflections
4. Read 'n' Seed
5. Share and Voice

If you notice at the bottom of this post, the categories will be listed as labels. This post has been labeled with all five kinds of posts. You will also see the number of each kind of post in my Labels Gadget at the top of the page. All post titles from now on will begin with one of the categories above.

The members of my web group are: 

1. http://colefisher.blogspot.com/
2. http://enviro-surfingwithamyandkristen.blogspot.com/
3. http://creativewithcayla.blogspot.com/
4. http://www.blogger.com/profile/05507051340565114957a

You can also follow my blog by clicking "Follow this Blog" in the gadget column. You can see my complete profile and all the blogs I am following by clicking on "See Complete Profile." (Make sure all these gadgets are in place).

I'm really excited to share all that I know on this topic. I'm hoping to do the read'n'seed and I'll definitely be sharing on this. If you have an interest in this similar topic, you can blog and talk to me. Go Green while being a GreenMachine!