Bed Bugs Keeping You Awake?

Hey Mr. Green,

How can I effectively cope with bed bugs in as green a way possible – if that’s even possible, given how difficult they are to treat in the first place. What is most frustrating is that many of my low-impact strategies aren't working because I live in a small studio apartment and my bed is near, well, everything, including all of my reuseable cloth bags, napkins, and towels.

Anyhow, all of these wonderful items which made a low impact are out the window right now due to these critters. Now my life is being lived out of plastic tubs and countless plastic bags until I am declared bug-free and can revert back to my low-impact ways again. Help?

–Victoria in Brooklyn, New York

If anybody still doubts the bed-bug resurgence, they missed the big news about the EPA's Bed Bug Summit, where public-health people and entomologists gathered to strategize about curbing the latest arthropodic vampire menace.

As far as I can tell, no single low-impact method exists to cope with these tormentors. You have to rely on an ensemble of measures to combat the bloodsuckers, whose American renaissance has resulted from their sneaking in on international travelers and luggage, our reluctance to use toxic pesticides, and their growing resistance to any pesticide.

It seems that you’ve already taken some measures to contain them by sealing up objects in which they can hide. They live in any clutter or tiny crack, so the first line of defense is a very thorough cleaning, not just of beds and bedding, but of anything that might be infested. Seal all crevices where they might lurk, down to cracks in the wall. The creatures can't fly, but they do crawl out for their gruesome meals. (University of Kentucky bed-bug authority Michael Potter says they "feed by piercing the skin with an elongated beak through which they withdraw blood. Engorgement takes about three to 10 minutes." And they don't merely pierce and suck, but inject an anticoagulant to facilitate the process.

Go over box springs, beds, and couches, inside and out. They also live inside and under furniture, at the edges of wall-to-wall carpeting, behind headboards, picture frames, mirrors, and switch plates and outlets. They can even take up residence inside electronic equipment.

Advice About Wrinkled Clothes

Hey Mr. Green,
I recently got an Energy Star washing machine. To make the switch complete, I also put up a solar dryer (i.e., a clothesline). But now my work shirts look all wrinkled, and I feel compelled to iron them--which I never did after pulling them out of the electric dryer. What is the greenest solution: ironing or using the dryer just for that load of shirts? --Ramona in Crownsville, Maryland

Before addressing your pressing needs, let me congratulate you on having an Energy Star washing machine. Those babies save lots of money, energy, and water. You'll net up to $550 in operating costs over its life at today's utility rates. They're at least 40 percent more energy efficient than other washers. And while conventional machines use up to 40 gallons of water per load, Energy Stars cut it down to 25; smaller models whittle it to a measly 10. The EPA's Energy Star program, by the way, represents your tax dollars working to save energy sources instead of fighting wars over them.
Two other tips about being green while getting your clothes clean: (1) Use the warm or hot setting only for heavily soiled items--most people don't know that up to 90 percent of a typical washer's energy consumption is dedicated to heating water. (2) Front-loading washers don't use as much water.
Now as for those wrinkles, unless you are very slow or inept, the iron takes less energy than the dryer. A dryer's typical 45-minute cycle takes 3.3 kilowatt-hours. An iron that's been on for 60 minutes uses about 1.2 kilowatt- hours. So even if you squandered a whole hour ironing, you'd still consume less energy than if you ran the dryer.
Some readers claim to achieve Botox-level erasure of clothesline-induced wrinkles by letting clothes get almost dry on the line, then flipping them in the dryer for just a few minutes. As a hypercasual (some would say slovenly) creature who rarely dons anything unrumpled, I can't personally vouch for this technique, so I'll leave the env-iron-mental R&D to you.

The Right-to-Dry Movement

Sometimes a bit of back-and-forth with you, beloved readers, can bring up useful and even thrilling ideas. Consider the following, wherein you'll read of a revolt against uptight homeowners’ associations that forbid clotheslines. The exchange starts with an idea for improving dryer efficiency and ends with a bold pro-clothesline stance. 
 
Hey Mr. Green,
In Phoenix the outside air is very hot and dry in summer. If a hot-air dryer for clothes could use this air as the intake, then it wouldn't need as much energy to dry the clothes. Does this make sense? --Joseph in Chandler, Arizona

Your idea of using warm, dry air coming into the machine sounds interesting. I don't know how much energy it would save, and it will take some serious calculating to figure out. But surely if a dryer is drawing indoor air at, say, 68 degrees and quite likely higher in humidity than the 110-degree outside air, there has to be some sort of savings. The big question would be whether the energy savings would justify the cost of fitting the dryer (and the house) with a duct to bring in the outside air.

If I succeed in figuring this out, I'll let you know. Of course I remain a staunch advocate of the common-sense, old-fashioned, solar-drying clothesline!

Hey Mr. Green,
Thanks for the feedback. Our homeowners’ association has a specific provision against using clotheslines, but I think I should start using one anyhow. I grew up in cold, wet, windy Ireland where everyone used a clothesline, and moved to hot, dry Phoenix where hardly anyone uses one. --Joseph in Chandler, Arizona

Well, I've got just right ally for you: the Right-to-Dry Movement. Yep, some sensible folks are fed up with those silly anti-clothesline rules and they're fighting back with a refreshingly amusing campaign to liberate clotheslines and restore them to their once-glorious place in the American landscape.

I'm quite fond this cultural zinger from Helen Caldicott: "Where in Victorian times, clotheslines were ubiquitous, Mrs. Brown's brassiere blowing in the breeze has apparently become scandalizing to some modern Americans. A strange brand of prudery has made it impossible for some people to conserve energy and money by using a clothesline."

Let linen flap defiant!

An Oily Situation

Hey Mr. Green,
What’s the best way to dispose of expired vegetable and olive oils?  I have a couple of bottles that are more than two years old and it doesn't seem like a good idea to pour them down the drain, but they are full so I don't want to put them in the garbage either. –Terri in Glenview, Illinois

From a plumbing perspective (as a side note, I think plumbing is one of the greatest accomplishments in human history), it's always a bad idea to pour oil down the drain. From a composting perspective, I'd hate to see even a drop your old oil added to the staggering 29 million tons of food waste that ends up in the landfill each year. 

"Reduce, reuse, recycle" is the old eco-adage, and “reuse” would apply in your situation. Vegetable oils make good protectants and lubricants, so you can deploy them to polish furniture or silverware, oil squeaky hinges, protect and preserve metal and wood on garden and other tools, oil shoes and kids' baseball gloves and wooden bats, and lube some mechanical devices, though bicycle purists don't recommend it and I'm not sure these oils have the right properties for maintaining guns.

You can even use some vegetable oils to make soap and beauty products. Olive oil in particular has been used for skin and hair protection since ancient times. When those biblical prophets say, “thou annointest me," they're talking olive, not soy, canola, or corn. However, I wouldn't go rubbing on old, rancid oil, or using it for any of the numerous personal-lubricant purposes that you may have heard of. Even if all of these uses were safe--and I'm not sure they are--the odor might well preclude the desired results.

Finally, you could find out whether you can recycle cooking oils as biodiesel by checking that great recycling resource, Earth911.com. Actually, I just checked it for you. The nearest place that takes cooking oil is about 40 miles from your town, in Crest Hill. But it's obviously not worth a special trip.

Dryer Diversion: Hot Air or a Good Solution?

Hey Mr Green,

I was in the yard one evening while I had clothes in the dryer in the basement. While watching the warm air from the dryer vent pour outside, I thought, "What a waste." Is there any way to channel all that warm air back into the home during winter? –Kathleen in Weirton, West Virginia

You can install a device called a "dryer duct diverter." It costs only a few dollars and works much like registers in ordinary heating systems. If you want to vent the dryer's hot air into your house, you flip a damper that blocks the hot air from going outside, sending it into the house instead.

Sounds like a clever solution for saving energy, but it does violate the building code (which requires dryers to vent to the outside)? You're perfectly free to bend the code, like millions of people do all the time. But remember, the diverter might not be a perfect solution and can be dangerous if hooked to a gas dryer. Because a dryer's main chore is to extract water from the clothes, the device could vent excess moisture that could cause mold and other damage to your house -- and lungs. It can also blow lint into the room if its lint trap isn't properly maintained. So if you try a diverter, stop using it if it makes things damp or fuzzy instead of just warm.

Flushing Out Alternative Toilets

Hey Mr. Green,

There are a lot of folks who live outside urban areas and have private wells and septic systems. How green are these?  Doesn't this essentially recycle the water we consume and flush?

--J. Lennon in Wake Forest, North Carolina

More than 20 percent of the country's households use septic systems. They are the basic choice where there is no municipal sewage system, although I suppose a composting toilet is the ultimate green sewer machine (some are even designed to capture the methane from the waste to burn in stoves). To be on the cutting edge of sludge, you can explore various models on the internet.

Of course, septic tanks have to be pumped out periodically and should be set up to avoid the risks of health problems or water pollution. But if they’re properly designed and installed, I don't see a problem. Since some of the tanks’ water seeps back into the ground, they actually do recycle. For a wealth of information, visit the EPA's website. Your tax dollars at work!

Whatever system you're on, flush minimally so as not to waste water. In my long-ago farm childhood, we had an old outdoor toilet. It was a used model, its wooden walls laced with graffiti so vivid that it jump-started my literary career. When we finally obtained the long-anticipated indoor alternative, my father enforced minimal flushing because of his concern that the well would go dry. With water, as with everything else, the old-timers practiced reduce, reuse, and recycle long before that phrase became an axiom.

Other water-conservation tools that could be used, whether you live in the middle of nowhere or the middle of Manhattan, are: low-flow toilets, restricted-flow showerheads, aerator screens on faucets, smaller lawns and minimal lawn watering, drip irrigation, use of native plants instead of thirsty exotics, and washing machines and dishwashers run with full loads only. (And yes, a modern dishwasher uses a lot less water than a typical hand-washing process.) It goes without saying that you should make sure no faucets leak.

Some people even collect rainwater and use "gray water" (from showers and laundry) on their gardens. But if you attempt these measures, make sure there aren't toxic materials on your roof or in gutters that would contaminate the water – and that the gray water is safe for your plants.

Podcast: Toilet Paper

"Hey Mr. Green: My supermarket carries only one brand of toilet tissue made with recycled materials, and it's made by a company known for bad forestry practices. Are there environmentally safe brands of TP?"

Click here to listen to the answer! You can also subscribe to Mr. Green's podcast.

Podcast: Beauty products

"Hey Mr. Green: I'm curious about preservatives typically found beauty products like methylparaben and propylparaben. Some sources state that they are harmless, and others say that they're harmful. Which is it?"

Click here to listen to the answer!

Hey Mr. Green,
I know organically grown cotton is better for the environment, but is there any difference in the fabric? Do the pesticides wash out in the laundry? --April in Redlands, California

Mr. Green answers:
The clothes shoppers buy don't have pesticides in them, but the clothes farmworkers wear home from the fields might. Conventional cotton growing requires a lot of poison--as much as 25 percent of the insecticides applied to all crops--so organic cotton, which is grown with minimal pesticides and governed under the same standards as organic food, is safer for farmers and the environment. Some organic cotton processors also use natural dyes--another plus. The major minus is a higher price. But if people are willing to shell out for a big name on a little label, they should be able to spend more on fashion that's lighter on the earth. For more information, visit aboutorganiccotton.org.