Make your Own or Enter To Win –Toxic Smart Products!

Enjoying a lovely sunset last Tuesday at Parksville Summer by the Sea Market, Outreach Coordinator Mikaela and I were struck with a brainwave –what if we crafted a selection of Toxic Smart cleaning products, and collected natural soaps and scrubs from market vendors to create prize packs? We drifted from vendor to vendor, and were amazed by their overwhelming generosity –we collected no less than three natural bars of soap, lavender essence oil and bath salts in just ten minutes of asking!

 But what is “Toxic Smart”, and why is Georgia Strait Alliance so keen to promote these products? I’ll share some of our reasoning:

Our Toxic Smart program promotes simple and often cost-effective ways citizens can reduce their use of toxic chemicals, benefitting your family and the environment. We do this by providing education on chemicals commonly found in your home or garden products (check out this Toxic Smart Glossary to put the chemicals on your product labels to the test) and providing simple, natural alternatives to commercial products.Our online education booklets, What Does Clean Really Mean?  What's Your Poison? and Solving the Solvent Problem share more information on common chemicals and natural solutions for your home, garden and workshop -worth the read!

It seems obvious that natural fresheners and cleaners are a safer choice than many commercial products, but what does exposure to common chemicals do to our families and environment? Take ammonia, hydrochloric and sulphuric acids for example. These chemicals are often found in commercial glass or drain cleaners, yet exposure to their fumes puts us at risk for eye, lung, nose or throat irritation, not to mention chemical burns, headaches and nausea (gross!). 

One can only imagine what happens to our marine environments when they come in contact with such chemicals via sewage into nearby lakes, rivers and streams. Phosphates, for instance, found in many commercial laundry and dishwashing detergents can cause a spiral of negative effects on fish and aquatic life. By creating a build-up of nutrients in the environment, phosphates induce excessive growth of algae (“algae blooms”), which in turn depletes oxygen and well… doesn’t end well for aquatic organisms. 

Now that I’ve got your brain whirring about what’s really stored in all those bottles and tubes tucked under your kitchen sink, how about I share a couple simple recipes for you to try on those stubborn sticky stains, and dusty summer air filling your living room (our heat wave along the Georgia Strait is still going strong!) I’ll even test them out to save you the trouble.

Tools and ingredients for Toxic Smart Recipes
(Photo by M. Spencer)

1     1) All Purpose Cleaner

      Next time you’re traipsing down your local grocery store cleaner aisle, ask yourself: do I really need this specialized cleaning product? Often the answer is no –a well-crafted All Purpose Cleaner can do the job on a variety of surfaces, like counters, floors, walls, tiles and woodwork. I tried the baking soda and water mixture (below) on all five surfaces, and was very pleased with the squeaky clean result! And I can hear all the aquatic life downstream from our Nanaimo office splashing their approval :-)

*  Dissolve 60ml baking soda in 1 litre of hot water, mix and use.

* Or try mixing 125ml pure soap (such as Dr. Bronner’s Castile Soap) with 4 litres of hot water. To help cut grease, add 60ml reconstituted or strained, freshly squeezed lemon juice.

Note: I’m not one for the smell of vinegar, but you may also try mixing equal parts vinegar and salt to get those surfaces sparkling.  

2) Natural Glass Cleaner

As I mentioned above, ammonia is a very toxic chemical for both humans and our environments. Unfortunately, many commercial glass cleaners mix ammonia with water, dye it a “cleaner” colour like blue or green, and can sell their product without a ‘Poison’ warning label! To avoid using ammonia in your homes, try this recipe for sparkling glass.

* Add 65ml vinegar OR 15ml lemon juice to a one litre spray bottle, then fill with warm water. Polish with newspaper (this helps avoid streaks).

Note: I used a terry cloth to test polish some glass mirrors and windows, and was also pleased with the result (just wipe gently).

Try out these recipes and let us know what you think! Do they clean as well as commercial cleaners, or perhaps free your conscious knowing that your cleaning practices are healthier for your home and the environment? As always, you can converse with us on Twitter, Facebook, or submit comments and videos to our Communities Atlas.

If you’d like to enter to WIN some of our Toxic Smart products (packaged so nicely in GSA labelled spray and cream bottles) and a lovely assortment of local, natural bath and body products you can either…

*        Submit a name entry to our Name our Mermaid Contest. Outreach Coordinator Mikaela and I will be attending many more events and festivals around the Georgia Strait, so stop by our table and enter or submit your name by e-mail to megan@georgiastrait.org. We’ll automatically consider you for the basket!

*         Sign one or more of our Stewards of the Strait Pledges, in person or online. We’ll automatically consider you for an in person entry, but if you sign our online Pledge please send a separate e-mail to megan@georgiastrait.org, with the Subject Line “SOS: Toxic Smart Entry.” One entry per person please!

Happy cleaning,

~Megan

Secondary Treatment of Wastewater: is it Good Enough?

Hi everyone, hope you all enjoyed a great semi-rainy weekend! I spent the weekend working alone at two Farmers' Markets, Saturday in Errington and Sunday in Cedar. Despite the less-than-ideal weather, I was amazed at how many people dropped by, and leaving the kids' activities in the car meant I was able to focus more on having some in-depth conversations with interested people. And boy, did I have some good conversations! I talked with one man for almost an hour about various conservation issues we’re working on. He supported the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline for economic reasons (but thought we should refine the oil here instead of sending it overseas to be refined, thereby further increasing our economy). His opinion was that there are many more immediate things to be worried about in the Georgia Strait. His primary concern, which we spent most of our time talking about, was sewage treatment.

Canada has always been way behind in their sewage treatment regulations. It was only last

Iona WWTP in Richmond (Photo by Georgia Strait Alliance)

year that the Federal Government finally made it mandatory to upgrade sewage treatment to the secondary level in Canada (except for small northern communities). Before that, many plants were only employing primary wastewater treatment, and were as a result likely in violation of the Fisheries Act's section which does not allow the discharge of deleterious (dangerous) substances into fish bearing waters. Wastewater, the stuff that is dumped down our toilets, sinks, and bathtubs as well as the water that drains out of our washing machines, dishwashers, and storm drains, now needs to be treated at the secondary level before it is reintroduced to the environment. Plants have been given until 2020, 2030, or 2040 to make the necessary upgrades to their systems, depending on the facility's risk (high, medium, or low, respectively). All wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) perform preliminary wastewater treatment or screening, or removing the “lumps.” In most plants today, the wastewater is left to settle, so heavy things will sink and can be removed, while liquids such as cooking oils (which are less dense than water) will rest on top and can be skimmed off. This is primary treatment, and the collected “sludge” can be processed to extract energy that can be used to offset local fossil fuel use. For all WWTPs in Canada, secondary treatment is now a mandatory upgrade. This is done mostly by bacteria and other micro-organisms, which break down 85-90% of the dissolved and suspended solids, including most pathogens, toxic chemicals such as pesticides, and heavy metals. The bacteria are then removed with the sludge they produce and the wastewater is either released back to the environment or further treated. Tertiary treatment, only used in a few cities such as Calgary (which receives an A+ on the 2004 National Sewage Report Card), removes select substances such as ammonia, phosphorous, nitrogen, and heavy metals to a further degree using advanced filtration methods, UV sterilization, and reverse osmosis.

Photo by Georgia Strait Alliance

As per the sewage treatment upgrades required for all WWTPs Canada-wide, the CRD (Victoria) and Lions Gate (in North Vancouver) WWTPs must be upgraded to perform secondary wastewater treatment by 2020, and the Iona plant (in Richmond) must perform these changes by 2030. Well that's great, but why has it taken so long? It’s unfortunate that for decades BC lagged behind the rest of the provinces in moving its communities to secondary treatment. Though they showed leadership in ordering Victoria to treat its sewage in 2006, it’s the federal laws that have moved BC forward. In Saskatchewan, secondary treatment has been the law for all WWTPs since 2002. In fact, 94% of the sewered population in the Prairies and Ontario had secondary or tertiary treatment in 1999. Only 63% of BC’s population did at that time. Victoria remains the only treatment plant in Canada to not even perform primary wastewater treatment, but will thankfully be upgraded to secondary treatment in the near future. So why has it taken BC so long to upgrade their prehistoric WWTPs? During our conversation, we hypothesized that it may simply be because residents of the mid-country provinces can physically see the effects of insufficient wastewater treatment. Treated wastewater goes directly into Canada’s rivers and lakes, almost all of which are accessible. Meanwhile, British Columbia's WWTPs dump their wastewater into the surrounding ocean and other large bodies of water, where a lot of the waste can sink to depths that only recreational divers can see, or can be carried off by oceanic currents and tides to less populated areas. Besides, the ocean is a vast body of water that couldn't possibly be affected by something so small in comparison. Could it?

I don’t even have the heart to go into the details of what this sewage does to the environment and the organisms that have the misfortune of living near the outfalls. There are documents online such as the National Sewage Report Card from 2004 and TBuck Suzuki’s “Hidden Killer” that summarize these threats thoroughly. What I will say is that while secondary treatment removes most of the dangerous compounds in wastewater, it doesn’t remove all of the hormones, toxic chemicals (like pesticides), pathogens, and heavy metals. It also doesn't remove all the organic nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorous, which can be a food source for photosynthetic micro-organisms and can cause massive algal blooms (creating an anoxic environment below it, a problem all its own). While it is a great minimum standard, an area as vulnerable as the Georgia Strait ecosystem deserves to be protected from these compounds, and WWTPs that dump their wastewater into this area should try to upgrade to tertiary treatment as soon as they can. All that estrogen from birth control pills that’s being flushed down toilets? It’s feminizing male fish. And BC’s resident Orca population is considered one of the most toxic animal populations on the planet because of all the hazardous substances (such as PCBs and mercury, both rather effectively removed by secondary treatment) they accumulate from the poisoned fish they eat. Sewage isn't the only source of this contamination but it's one we can stop. So even though we are making a change to improve the quality of the Strait’s water, we still can reach further to protect these waters.

It’s okay, here’s the silver lining! There are things you can do!

      - Stop or limit the use of toxic cleaning products in your house (from glass cleaner to laundry detergent to dishwasher soap), there are safer alternatives for your family and the environment.

      - Never flush old medications down the toilet, any pharmacy will take them and dispose of them properly free of charge.

      - Avoid getting oil, anti-freeze fluids, and soaps in storm drains.

      - Feminine hygiene products should never be flushed; really nothing except toilet paper and the obvious should go in your toilet. Besides, it could clog your pipes (ew.).
- Tell your friends and family about ways they can help do their part. If everyone made little changes to what went down their drains, we'd have a huge and positive result!

Have a look at the 2004 National Sewage Report Card and the Government of Canada’s new Wastewater Systems Effluent Regulations (careful, it’s wordy) for a ton of information about Canada’s sewage treatment methods. I hope you enjoyed my rant; hopefully Megan will write a happier blog post next week!

- Mikaela

Community values must be heard

It’s true - the voice of a community is a powerful and inspiring thing.

I spent several days this week with members of the Powell River community, having been invited to speak at an event hosted by the Powell River Water Watch group. It was a truly wonderful experience in so many ways. Meeting such passionate people who care so deeply about where they live was quite inspiring. Even more so was seeing how these same people are willing to act on those passions to ensure that their community makes the right decisions for its future.

What was behind the invitation to speak was a proposed plan to treat Powell River’s sewage by partnering with the Catalyst pulp mill. Essentially, a proposal for ‘co-treatment’ would see the mill treat the community’s wastewater rather than it having to build an upgraded municipal system to manage its waste.

There are many questions and concerns around this proposal, but even more alarming is how this one option is being put forward without first including the residents in a discussion on how else wastewater can be managed. Wastewater planning is community planning. Deciding on a path without first considering how this decision fits into the overall community plan is foolhardy, as is making this decision without meaningful consultation.

The other danger of this ‘one track mind’ decision is that it ignores the growing opportunities that come with wastewater treatment. Management strategies that treat sewage as a resource that can benefit a community by turning waste into a renewable source of energy, nutrients and water, not just something to be rid of, are the way of the future. This attitude is already growing in a number of communities in BC – including Metro Vancouver, the Capital Regional District of Victoria, the Regional District of Nanaimo, and smaller communities such as Oliver.

The meeting on Tuesday night was a packed house, with over 150 residents in attendance. The questions asked were thoughtful and in the end the message was clear: we want to be involved in this decision that will affect us for years to come. I don’t know if the three city councillors who attended the meeting will act on what they heard, but they would be wise to, at the very least, involve their community more in decision making.

I have been actively involved in wastewater consultation processes in Metro Vancouver, Nanaimo and Victoria, and can speak to how when both sides enter into consultations with the intent of it being something beneficial, it can truly make any decision or plan better. I can say this was absolutely the case in Metro Vancouver, where over 2 years the Advisory Committee I sat on (along with 8 other committed individuals) worked with senior staff to create a better Liquid Waste Management Plan for the region.

The experience, knowledge and values that exist within Powell River, and so many other communities in BC, can only make any community planning process better. Ignoring community values is something leaders do at their peril, and to exclude them from planning processes will only result in decisions that sacrifice sustainable communities for short term expediency. We will be a better region and province when we stop viewing consultations and transparency as a road block to progress but rather the strongest path to healthy communities.

---