It’s a mixed bag this week, but there seems to be a bunch of stuff on saving electricity, gas, paper…

• Atlantic Garbage Patch – Huffington Post. Some really cool—but gross—photos.
• MBTA Launches First of Hybrid Buses – Boston Globe. We really need more of these. Our house is on a bus route, and disgusting black dust builds up on the windowsills.
• Going Green at the Treasury – Boston Globe. People receiving federal benefits will now get electronic payments—saving hundreds of millions of dollars and tons of paper and mail.
• EPA Wants 16 Chemicals Added to Toxics Release Inventory – Environmental Leader. Finally!
• Turn Your Key, Be Idle Free – Energy Savers. My landlord’s son leaves his car idling in the backyard for half an hour at a time. It makes me want to scream.
• Universities Across the United States Make Strides in Energy Conservation – Energy Savers. I wonder if we can get Berklee signed up for the College Sustainability Report Card.
• Bouquets of Flowers, Where Do You Stand? – Making This Home. I love the flowers that my landlady tends in our front yard, but conventional flowers from stores are shipped halfway around the world and dosed with pesticides. Ick.
• The Environmental Impact of Everyday Things – Chic Ecologist. Psst—by “everyday things” she means “feminine products.”
• Three Ways Cleaning Can Help You Save Energy – greenUPGRADER. We never vacuum our refrigerator coils, and we really should.
• The Lazy Preserver – Simple. Green. Frugal. It’s kind of cool seeing which things overwintered in her garden or stored well.
• Making Your Own Deodorant – Simple. Green. Frugal. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I think the baking soda/cornmeal powder puff thing is cool.
• Ask Umbra on food dehydrators, cage-free and free-range poultry, and e-readers – Grist. Normally I love Ask Umbra, but here she doesn’t mention “certified humane” eggs, and she equates the Kindle and the iPad. The iPad may use very little power for a laptop but that’s a lot for an ereader.

In other news, my Socially Responsible Banking with Wainwright post was featured in the Carnival of Personal Finance at Punch Debt in the Face.

And as usual, if you read something interesting, send it along.

In my last post I told you all about Vida Verde, the co-op of Brazilian house cleaners. They use homemade cleaning supplies, which are far less harmful to respiratory systems than conventional cleaning products. They were kind enough to let me post their recipes, so those of you who aren’t in the Boston area can make them yourselves. These and more are included in Vida Verde’s booklet on how to make and use their cleaning products.

And while we’re at it, check out the recipes Erin at the Conscious Shopper has posted, too. They’re similar, but slightly different. And it looks like Erin uses spray bottles for hers. Ruth, the woman who cleans our house, repurposes squirty water bottles to mix them in, and the peppermint essential oils she adds smell delicious.

Do you use green cleaning products? Or make your own? If you have any different recipes, please share!

Somehow my search for green cleaning supplies turned into a search for green cleaning services. (Okay, I do know how—Sharon.) I really didn’t want to use a regular cleaning service. Not only do conventional cleaning supplies use lots of packaging and include potentially toxic ingredients, but often the workers aren’t paid well. If I were to use a service like that, it would go against all my morals.

But Sharon told me about Vida Verde. It’s a co-op of Brazilian women who make their own cleaning supplies. It was started because they were poorly paid at their cleaning services or, if they were self-employed, they were forced to buy client lists from more established cleaners—for hundreds of dollars!

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So they started this group. All the women are self-employed, but the group helps them connect with customers, learn English, deal with taxes and legal questions, and generally learn how to advocate for themselves. Now they work fewer hours and are paid more per house.

They choose to make their own cleaning supplies not only because it’s cheaper, but because breathing the fumes from conventional cleaning supplies all day can lead to asthma and other respiratory problems. Janitors and house cleaners have far higher rates of asthma and bronchitis than people who don’t clean for a living.

I have to admit to being really conflicted about hiring someone to clean my house. On the one hand, I hate cleaning. Because of that I rarely actually do it often enough to assuage my guilt at the state of the house. (Jason doesn’t feel that guilt. I hate to fall into stereotypical gender roles, but this may be one.)

On the other hand, I cleaned someone else’s house the summer before college and hated every minute of it. I don’t want to inflict that misery on someone else. And I really don’t want to become the Man.

Now, I know that whenever I eat out or buy anything, I’m paying someone to do something that I don’t want to do. Unless I go completely off the grid and make everything by hand, that’s going to be the case. This is just different because I imagine that everyone hates cleaning as much as I do and I’m allowing someone into my house. (We saw how well that went with the cat sitter.)

But I signed up for Vida Verde’s service a month ago, and so far I feel really good about it. Ruth comes once every two weeks and does all the things that I never seem to get to: mopping the floors, cleaning the shower, dusting—even washing the trash can. And starting with a clean house and knowing that she’s coming makes us keep the house neater than we normally would. I still kind of feel like the Man, but I also think it’s fair to trade a few hours of something I enjoy (working at Berklee) for something I hate (cleaning).

What do you think? Am I rationalizing a bad choice or just overthinking a good one? Would you hire someone to clean your house, too? Am I the Man?

I spent waaay too much time this week looking through all the maps and charts in the Urban Land Institute report. Click all the way through to it to check them out yourself.

• Cost of Long Commute Offsets Suburbs’ Bargain Housing – Boston Globe. Exactly! And Cambridge has the absolutely lowest transportation cost of all cities in the Greater Boston area (including Boston itself).
• We Need Birth Control, Not Geoengineering – Grist. Good point. We support Population Services International, which provides contraceptives and other health care to people in developing countries.
• Europe Finds Clean Energy in Trash – New York Times. When I think of burning trash I think of my parents doing it in a barrel. (Yes, it’s as bad as you imagine.) I had no idea how clean and efficient it could be.
• Genetically Engineered Crops Are More Environmentally Friendly than Organic Ones – Boston Globe. While this guy is way more combative than necessary, I kind of agree with him. At least, I’ve never read a compelling argument as to why everyone is so terrified of genetically modified food. The closest I’ve come is the fact that a lack of diversity in our food supply is bad, but that’s more of a factory-farm problem than a GMO-problem.
• Full List of the Products I Use in My Own House – The Good Human. I always love looking in other people’s medicine cabinets. And in this case it’s instructive.
• Ask Umbra on Birth Control, Single-Serve Coffee, and Sanitizing Countertops – Grist. She’s right: my IUD is pretty great.
• Which Veggie Burgers Were Made with Neurotoxin? – Mother Jones. Unnecessarily alarmist? Sure. Something to keep in mind? Probably. (Thanks, Jason!)
• Save on Ink, Lose on Paper – Pays to Live Green. As a print geek, I find this really amusing. Apparently Century Gothic font uses less ink.
• Recycling Drop-Off Center – CCTV. A video tour of Cambridge’s Recycling Drop-Off Center. I didn’t even know we could recycle some of these things.

Do these things keep getting longer and longer? Anyway, that’s all for this week. Remember to send along those interesting tidbits you find.

Used Brita filters—and all #5 plastics—can either be dropped off at participating Whole Foods or mailed in to Preserve, to be recycled into toothbrushes, razors, dishes, etc.