Washington County Oregon Ecochallenge

Organic cotton.  I've seen bamboo toothbrushes, bowls and cutting boards but I don't know the full range of bamboo products.

This is an excellent question, one I'm not sure I know the answer to.  The climate action group, 350, is committed to systemic change and I try to support what they do.  Rather than just, say, biking to work themselves, they try to advocate for infrastructure that makes biking a more attractive option themselves.  For instance, they helped pass...

Informing parents that having period is natural and not a sickness. The country where I grew up many people believe that they should keep their girls home during that time of the month.  

4 minute showers!  You can also put a bucket in your shower to catch water as it warms up and use that to water plants.  In droughts, people don't flush every time unless they had a number 2.  If this is too radical, even just one person in the household flushing 3 fewer times a day would make a significant difference. "If its yellow let...

Well, looks like you can only go back in time so far and fill out your daily challenges.  So I missed out on credit for three days...oops!

The kids and the forest fires. I've lived in this state for 38 years and I know what is normal weather.  When I realized that the forest fires that were sending toxic smoke into our town were not a one-time thing, I started to do some digging and learned that climate change is here and its huge.  As one WWF director was quoted as saying,...

Wow.  Palm oil is just the beginning.  Lots of tropical crops, if the forest is cut down to clear land, destroy the rainforest.  Shade-grown for coffee and other things usually means grown within the forest.  The Rainforest Action Network evaluates companies and puts a little tree frog symbol on those things that don't destroy the rain forest....

I think during the westward expansion we didn't have established croplands, so hunting and ranching provided filling nourishment for a population on the move. We got those sorts of meat-centric recipes ingrained in our culture, and having meat started to feel like a mark of satiety and security.  Nowadays we are no longer on the move, so our...

I am on a list of individuals ready to sign up for the Master Recyclers program for Washington County in the Fall.  I can't wait.  I am very interested in find out more about items which are not recyclable in your curbside recycling bin--I want to know where/how else to recycle those harder items and become a knowledgeable resource for others...

I feel like I already did an "ok" job with these labels, but I also shared what I learned with my husband, whom is FAR more likely to throw food out based on the label.  Hopefully this is something we can get better about, now that we are more aware of the fact that the labels are not based on actual data and at the discretion of the...