Green Mom: Happy Earth Day Oprah

I know Earth day was a while ago now, but I just got around to watching Oprah’s Earth Day episode. I figured it would be mostly tips on how to go green that I’ve already heard, but she had some guests on that had interesting things to say.

Fabien Cousteau (grandson of Jacque Cousteau) talked about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Apparently there is a garbage heap in the Pacific Ocean that is twice the size of Texas. It stretches from the coast of California to Japan and in some places is 90 feet deep. It is estimated that 90 percent of the heap is made up of plastic and 80 percent of the total litter is not from boats, but from land — debris that has been thrown or has blown into waterways from as far away as Iowa. The photos that were shown of birds with stomachs so full of garbage (because they think it’s food) that they actually starve to death, or of a turtle that has grown into adulthood with an elastic band around its shell resulting in an hourglass shape were pretty eye opening. I don’t make a habit of throwing my trash, plastic or otherwise, directly into the street or waterway, but it does make you think about where all the trash goes and how it’s affecting us by affecting other animals.

The second most eye-opening nugget for me was probably the most obvious. Oprah had Michael Pollan, an author that writes about food, talk a bit about pesticides. One of the things he said was, “You wouldn’t let your child go under the kitchen sink and drink the cleaning products, so why would you use harmful products that when washed down the drain end up back on their plates via their food?” I do try to use eco-friendly products but I never thought about them actually being washed down the drain then consumed via the foods my family eats. The same goes with lawn fertilizer. We use organic lawn products because we have a dog and a toddler, but we are often on the lawns of others that do not. Even though the lawn care company is claiming that the lawn is safe for children to play on after 24 hours, that doesn’t take into account the chemicals that are then seeping into the soil, and ending up in the produce that we buy at the grocery store. That, on top of the pesticides used to grow non-organic food, equals a lot of chemicals being ingested.

For a limited time, Oprah is offering coupons on her site for things like Sigg bottles. Say what you will about Oprah, but this Green Mom was happy to learn something from her.