What To Do With Old Meds

Hey Mr. Green,

What's the best way to deal with leftover prescription medications?

--Paul in Delmar, New York

Dispose of unused medications in your trash can rather than flushing them down the toilet or sink. Sewage-treatment plants can't remove all chemicals, and when pharmaceuticals are in the outflow (whether dumped in whole or after they've passed through the body), they harm marine life. Male fish, for example, are becoming female because of drug contaminants in waterways.

Researchers in Colorado, to cite one instance, found characteristics of both sexes in many individual white suckers; in Boulder Creek, females outnumbered males five to one, and half the males also had female organs--not because of willing transgender tendencies, but because of hormones in the water.

To be hypercautious, or if your neighbors are dope fiends who'll rummage through trash and ingest any meds they find, follow these procedures recommended by the EPA: (1) Keep medicine in its original container, scratching out the patient's name. (2) Check whether your community offers a prescription-drug disposal program--many do. (3) Before discarding them, modify drugs to discourage consumption by adding a small amount of liquid to pills, and adding salt, charcoal, or spices to liquids. (4) Seal the container shut with strong tape. (5) Place it in a nontransparent bag (don't hide it in food products). (6) Discard it as close to the scheduled garbage pickup time as possible.

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.

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: Scavenging Firewood

"Hey Mr. Green: If I scavenge firewood instead of buying it, is it better to heat my house by burning wood in my fireplace, or by using electricity from traditional sources?"

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

Home Heating: Go Green Now to Save Energy in Winter

Hey Mr. Green,
If I scavenge firewood instead of buying it, is it better to heat my house by burning wood in my fireplace or by using electricity from traditional sources? --Joyce in Charleston, South Carolina

Hey Joyce,
Perfect question for this time of year. If you start thinking about heating during the summer, you can get your act together in time to upgrade your system before winter. Sure, this sounds like that goody-goody little ant in Aesop’s fable, working his exoskeleton off while the grasshopper frolicked around the fields, but it’s true.

First, don't burn wood very often unless you have an EPA-approved fireplace box or stove. Depending on the local climate and terrain, a wood fire can be a dangerously polluting proposition, which is why some towns have banned it. It can be especially harmful in regions with high levels of soot, or “particulate matter” pollution. Too much of it can damage lungs and circulatory systems, and according to the American Lung Association, woodstoves and fireplaces account for much as 80 percent of this pollution in some areas during the winter. (You can find real-time information about your city’s air quality and more information about particle pollution at airnow.gov.)

Nontoxic Roach Control

Hey Mr. Green,
I live in a row house in the Capitol Hill Historic (read: very old) District in Washington, D.C. My next-door neighbor just found her residence swarming with cockroaches. She called an exterminator, who advised her to warn her neighbors that spraying her roaches will send them scurrying to the houses on either side, suggesting maybe we should also hire him. I do not want a toxic house. Neither do I want cockroaches. If her bugs migrate, is there a green way to deal with them? -–Patricia in Washington, D.C.

Hey Patricia,

Don’t panic. Stay on the line. We’re here, on full cockroach alert, ready to talk you through this crisis.

I know cockroaches well, having coexisted with them for some years in roach-friendly climes and structures. One of the more terrifying critters I have ever seen was an albino cockroach peering up with beady red eyes from a crevice in my kitchen table—surrounded by a streaming, squirming swarm of its brown brethren.

I survived, and so will you.

Pesticides should only be used as a last resort. Your first line of defense is scrupulous cleanliness. Scrub everything well. Don't leave food out, not even a crumb; rinse the bottles and cans you plan to recycle (roaches love to wade in reeking beery backwash) and place them outside as quickly as possible. Eliminate surface moisture, especially around all pipes, vents, conduits, etc. Roaches thrive in damp, dark places, and openings around pipes are one of their favorite routes. The cabinet under a kitchen sink is a roach’s Buckingham Palace.

After every surface has been scrupulously cleaned and dried, get rid of all clutter, in which roaches love to retreat to plot their next foray.

Podcast: Eating Green on a Budget

"Hey Mr. Green: My wife and I would like to eat organically, but we are of modest means. We also live in a small apartment, so we can't grow our own food. Any ideas?"

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!