The Trash Vortex

I found this visual online, Greenpeace calls it the Trash Vortex, it is also called The Asian Trash Trail or the Eastern Garbage Patch.  If you follow the link, it brings you to the Greenpeace site.  What the Trash Vortex is, is an area (the size of Texas) north of Hawaii where a significant amount of our trash travels to. Because of the currents in the Pacific Ocean, the trash from the US west coast and from Japan collect in two main areas.  If you click on "The Journey of Trash" you can see the timeline that it takes our trash to collect in this vortex.

Not only does our trash make for choking hazards for ocean wildlife, but it is also full of chemicals that are released into the water.  It would be near impossible to stop all of the trash getting into the ocean, but I think that this is a great opportunity and potentially a way to open eyes to how many chemicals and toxins we allow in the products that we buy.  As consumers start to realize this, and look for products with less toxins, companies will make the products to meet our wants. So start looking at what goes into your products and what happens to them when you're done with them.

Green Products

I was Stumbling the other day, and came across a website that does green ratings for products.  The website is called Good Guide, and helps you "Find healthy, green, ethical products according to scientific ratings." You can type in a product, and it will give you ratings of different products from best score to worst.  There are scores for  Health, Environment and Society, and then an overall score.  You can search for specific products; "Head and Shoulders," or broad categories; "Shampoo."

Check it out! It looks like they have a pretty comprehensive list of products, from cleaning supplies to appliances, from electronics to pet food.  It also seems that you are likely to see the same companies popping us as the top runners (Seventh Generation and Samsung, etc.)