Prairie Dawn  

Day 2:  Shining the Sink and Look Before you Leave

            Since I’m walking back through the Babysteps and considering them for sustainability, I’ll be starting with the shiny sink.  Maintaining a shiny sink requires only discipline and a dry dishtowel, neither of which affects sustainability much, but the initial instructions for getting your sink to shine *the first time* involve the use of bleach.  So I am going to have to go and research the safety and sustainability of bleach.

            Here's a link to the Wikipedia article on bleach.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine_bleach.  I don't think I want to breathe that stuff.  And here's an article on the manufacture of bleach.  http://www.madehow.com/Volume-2/Bleach.html.  I wasn't able to tease much out of it to tell me the environmental impact of making it, though.  So from my position of ignorance, there seems to be at least some reason to avoid using bleach when we can.

            On the other hand, perfectionism is another crime against ourselves we’re supposed to be fighting, so why not just substitute?  I have found that vinegar, yup, plain, ordinary white vinegar, is a pretty good substitute for all of the different spray cleaners you can buy, and a lot cheaper too.  It even kills germs.  It should do a pretty good job of shining sinks.  Besides, if you don’t rinse, you get lots of cool, safe, kid impressing bubbles when you add the baking soda and scrub.  But don't ever mix vinegar with bleach unless you want to be gassed to death.

            Stop me now before I start to worry about where baking soda comes from.

            And a habit:  Look Before You Leave, which appeared in my email today.  So let’s put on some green colored glasses and turn off lights and electronic stuff before we leave a room with our handful of things to put away.

And a request, from a friend.  Please read this blog entry from Greenpa at Little Blog in the Big Woods.  http://littlebloginthebigwoods.blogspot.com/2008/04/hunger-compilation-and-action.html.  Food price increases here hurt a lot of us, but in many other countries it’s fast becoming a matter of life and death…and some people are getting rich off of others’ suffering.

Prairie Dawn