Eco-Chick · The modern girl's guide to living green & fabulous.

Battery Recycling For Dummies!

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by Starre Vartan · 03/11/08

I don’t know who the heck that guy is on the right, but wouldn’t it be cool if a giant battery robot showed up at your house to help you recycle?

How can I recycle batteries?
—Barbara Kenopsky, Milford, CT

Somehow, it happens: You end up with a drawer full of spent batteries and no idea what to do with them. You have a nagging feeling they shouldn’t be thrown in the trash, and you’re wise to be cautious. “Batteries contain heavy metals such as mercury, lead, and cadmium, which can contaminate the environment when improperly disposed of,” says Roxanne Smith, a press officer for the Environmental Protection Agency. “When incinerated, certain metals might be released into the air or can concentrate in the ash produced by the combustion process.”

Among the most worrisome of those metals is mercury, which is toxic on its own but even more so when it binds to organic molecules in the environment and becomes methylmercury. Increasing in concentration as it works its way up the food chain, methylmercury accumulates in fish, birds, and humans. The good news is the mercury found in some disposable batteries has fallen by 97 percent since 1984. The bad news is the mercury reductions can allow municipalities to exempt some single-use batteries from hazardous waste regulations. (Find out if yours accepts them by calling your town’s sanitation department.)

Using rechargeable batteries reduces the volume of single-use ones headed for landfills, but keep in mind that they also contain heavy metals. Rechargeables in gadgets like cell phones, computers, and power tools are now accepted at many stores. (Find a drop-off site near you at the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation or Earth 911.) Most jewelry stores collect button batteries (like those found in watches), and auto repair shops are required to take used lead-based car batteries.

From Starre Vartan’s Green Guru column in Audubon Magazine.

Send your most vexing questions to greenguru@audubon.org

batteries, Pollution, rechargable, Recycling

Get Your Eco Sexy On!

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by Starre Vartan · 02/26/07

Too bad I didn’t post this in time for Valentine’s Day! But there’s always Earth Day coming up….Babeland, the women-friendly sex toy store, now has an Eco-Sexy kit, which they describe thusly:

When you want something a bit racier to go with your organic strawberries, break out the Eco-Sexy Kit. This all-in-one kit includes the body-friendly Laya Spot vibrator and a selection of premium, all-natural spa products. The attractive Laya Spot is made of Elastomer, a new latex-free and phthalate-free material. The Babeland Massage Candle is made of skin-safe soy that transforms into warm, deliciously scented massage oil as it heats up. Emerita Natural Lube moisturizes while keeping things slick (and the company doesn’t test on animals or use animal-derived ingredients). Top off your sexcapade with the Mamba Condoms, produced by a well-regarded Swedish non-profit whose testing process is 15 times more stringent than any other condom company in the world!

The Eco-Sexy Kit

Babeland also has a selection of rechargable vibrators, so you don’t have to use wasteful, polluting one-use batteries to get off.

One of the latest innovations in vibrator design, rechargeable toys like the Acuvibe and Jasmine boast the powerful vibrations of traditional electric vibrators but are completely cord-free. The Je Joue, a programmable vibrator, is truly a technological wonder. The Chandra, a sexy, mini-vibrator that slips over your fingertip, offers the ultimate in portability.

The Je Joue

Also, check out this fantastic ‘Ecoholic’ article from Toronto’s alternative weekly, entitled, “Is Your Sex Life Eco-Friendly?” It has some Toronto-specific info, but plenty that will be useful and interesting to us Yanks too.

Animals, batteries, design, earth day, electric, farm, oil, Organic, produce, rechargable, skin, soy, spa, vibrators, waste, women

Energy Vampires

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by Starre Vartan · 07/23/06

We all know someone in our lives who sucks the energy out of us….well this post is not about those people but the appliances that do the same thing. Maybe you have already heard about how much power all those TVs, PCs, and ACs use on ‘standby’ mode (that’s when they’re not on, but still have a glowy light saying ‘turn me on and I’m ready!’)? Equally bad are all the rechargable doohickeys, like iPods, cell phones and electronic organizers. Yes, it’s good that they’re rechargable, but not that great when you read that they waste 1/2 the power they consume!

The UK is now outlawing standby mode on new products, going back to the (sensible) old-fashioned days when you turned something off and it was actually off, and not sucking energy for no good reason. Crazy stuff, that!

What to do about all this waste? Throw out all your stuff and live in a monastery? (Not so much- even monks listen to MP3′s these days) There’s a really simple solution: buy a couple (or a few) power strips with on/off switches. Plug all your gear into it. I have one for my TV/DVD/Stereo/Rabbit Ears. When I watch a movie, I turn the whole shebang on at the power strip. When I’m done I turn the strip off. It’s way too annoying to individually plug and unplug stuff into the wall. Doing the same thing for a computer set-up and other areas where there are a bunch of things plugged in will save you a bundle on energy, and keep CO2 out of the atmosphere. There’s nothing worse than using energy for nothing!

If you want more details, read the excellent article in the NYTimes, “I Vant to Drink Your Vatts” reprinted by the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. You can learn about the difference between ‘Wall Warts’ and ‘Vampires’ there. Fun!

atmosphere, Energy, Fashion, News, NYTimes, rechargable, Technology, tv, waste