Choose Non-Pollutant Wall Paint

featured this month in Archi Expo

Collectively associated with outdoor air, pollution is present indoors as well. Toxic chemicals, such as formaldehyde, are more prevalent inside than out. This is because traditional indoor wall paints emit VOCs (volatile organic compounds), a variety of gases including formaldehyde that are harmful over short and long-term. To address this issue, some indoor paint brands are constantly innovating VOC-free, non-toxic paints to also meet color and durability standards.

Anna Sova Luxury Organics, a small Texas-based company that produces Greenguard certified paint, advertises that 90% of their paint ingredients are food-based. The company believes that breathing good air is as important as eating healthy. Anna Sova’s milk-based paints are a preferred product of professional designer Anjie Cho, a New York feng shui specialist and architect.

Californian company Dunn Edwards produces more affordable lines of eco-paint, some of which are Greenguard approved. Dunn Edwards is a go-to paint for California based interior designer Sarah Barnard who specializes in sustainability and historic preservation.

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Non-Toxic Cleaning Products

No doubt the reasons for purchasing highly advertised and recommended cleaning products are almost all, if not entirely, based on the goal of keeping your home clean so that your family can live a long, healthy life. Unfortunately, purchasing these chemical agents most often accomplishes exactly the opposite effect, filling households with tainted air supply and ultimately resulting in a plethora of health issues including, but certainly not limited to, asthma, allergies, eye irritation and nausea.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has noted that indoor air quality (IAQ) can be anywhere from two to five times as polluted as the air we breathe outside. This is due to a range of factors including chemicals in decorating materials (like paint) and highly toxic cleaning agents. Store-bought cleaning products come with a laundry list of hard-to-pronounce chemicals, all of which you repeatedly release into your family’s internal atmosphere every time you use them to provide a “clean” environment. Fortunately, it’s perfectly possible to do away with these cleaning materials once and for all and still rest easy in a clean, non-toxic home. 

Switching to homemade, non-toxic cleaning supplies is as easy as looking up time-tested recipes online or in books and committing to using these substances in place of toxic agents. The best part? A healthier family isn’t the only positive outcome to making this change. Eliminating toxic cleaning supplies from your home is also a great way to ensure that children don’t accidentally come into contact with these harmful materials, whether snooping around in cabinets or lovingly offering “help” during cleaning times.

Aside from creating an all-around healthier living environment for you and your family, going green and non-toxic in the area of cleaning can save money by a long shot. Rather than paying per bottle for toxic concoctions, there are numerous ways to combine safe, cheap, regular household chemicals to create non-toxic cleaning supplies for your home, and many of these substances can be purchased for pennies on the dollar, especially in bulk. Not to mention many of these products also have other uses in the home, from laundry detergent to cooking to more.

On a global scale, reducing the use of toxic chemicals in your home also increases the quality of the outdoor environment as well as the amount of safe drinking water available to our population. When you use toxic cleaners, chemicals are released into the air, and though they most immediately pollute indoor air, they eventually make their way outdoors and, ultimately, into the ozone. Pouring chemicals into drains and washing them away results directly in pollution of the water supply we use for safe use and consumption, thereby reducing the already tiny 1% we have for use.

by Anjie Cho

Why Save Water?

If you live in this century, and let’s face it, you do, you’ve undoubtedly been encouraged to save water in any way possible to you. One obvious reason for preserving our water supply is that, contrary to popular belief, water is not a renewable resource. Our planet has a finite amount of water, and only 1% of this resource is even available for human consumption. In addition to this very obvious reason to be wary of water use, there are numerous other factors influencing the mission to reduce our nation’s, and our planet’s, use of this precious resource.

As previously mentioned, of the finite amount of water available to us on Earth, only a stunning 1% is potable, and this number is rapidly decreasing due to excessive pollutants and litter being dumped into our clean water supply almost daily. We absolutely cannot live without clean drinking water, and neither can any other species supported by Earth. Every living creature needs water, which means that even if we redirect our pollution into water sources that humans do not currently use, we are still actively killing various species of the animal kingdom, many of which are already endangered. Even for advocates of animal consumption, this is an issue. What will you eat if we eradicate all existing species? Inability to conserve our water for later use ultimately means extinction of all life on our planet.

Aside from keeping the entire planet alive, conservation of water is beneficial for that other green substance we love: money. Taking care to monitor your water usage and preserve as much as possible directly influences the amount of money we spend each month, each year on utility bills. These equations are simple. Many of us are charged based on water consumption, as we are with any other energy source. The fewer gallons we utilize, the less money we pay. As a side note, popular methods for conserving water can save thousands of gallons of water annually. Conserving water doesn’t just decrease water utility bills, though. It also directly affects the cost of other energy bills including gas. The fewer gallons of water you heat for various reasons, from showering to washing clothes to washing dishes, the less gas you use to heat this water, which results in immediately lower gas bills.

Other reasons for conserving water include reducing state and national funds (to which we contribute) spent on public structure aimed at keeping our water supply flowing and fresh, reducing expenditures on sewage and wastewater processes and even reduction of the occurrence of sinkholes in some states.

by Anjie Cho