The Environmental Citizen

I found out about Wilderness Inquiry through one of my company’s interns, an amazing young woman named Virginia Pendleton. Virginia is spending her summer as an Outdoor Leader with Wilderness Inquiry, leading adventure trips.  Wilderness Inquiry is an award-winning, non-profit organization in Minneapolis that helps people from all walks of life personally experience the natural world. Its mission is to make adventure travel accessible to everyone, regardless of age, background or ability. Each year, they operate more than 100 multi-day and daylong trips to locations around the world. Destinations include Alaska’s Porcupine River, the Mississippi River, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone Park, Mexico, Costa Rica, Patagonia, Kenya, Tanzania, Belize, New Zealand and Australia.

Schoolchildren from St. Paul Minn on the Mississippi

What I found unique about Wilderness Inquiry was their commitment to including people of varying levels of physical ability on adventure trips, and to doing so seamlessly. To that end, they have developed different field-tested gear adaptations, like special seating for canoes and kayaks, and a device for wheelchairs which dramatically increases mobility on rough terrain. They’ve been doing this since 1978, and offer inclusion training to share what they’ve learned in the process. Awesome stuff! Check them out at http://www.wildernessinquiry.org

Wilderness Inquiry Kenyan Safari

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While the rest of the automotive industry and bussiness world are wondering about the long term impact of Toyota’s recent recalls, the company clearly remains focused on the future in ways that the rest of the industry seems to be missing all together. Jim Lentz the Director of Toyota Motor Sales in North America makes an assertion that you do not hear often from an auto executive.  The price of gasoline is going to be prohibitively expensive and soon.

You may also want to see what T. Boone Pickens has to say about the peak of world capacity of 85 million barrels per day. :

First the bad news. Dry-cleaning fluid (Tetrachloroethene, also known as perchloroethylene or “perc”) has been classified as a probable human carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. It has also been classified as a hazardous air contaminant by the Environmental Protection Agency, and has been shown to cause menstrual irregularities, fertility problems, and miscarriages in women who work in the dry cleaning industry. It’s a central nervous system depressant and a soil contaminant that is considered more difficult to clean up than oil spills.

Then there are all those plastic bags. It’s hair-raising just to think about the waste stream generated by the dry cleaning industry.

Now some good news. There are alternative cleaning methods, such as hydrocarbon solvents and wet cleaning, which uses water and biodegradable soap. These “green” methods are not yet industry-wide, though, and may be thin on the ground outside major cities.

Some more good news. There is also “Dry Greening,” a movement focussed on getting rid of all those plastic bags. While some dry cleaners offer recycling of bags and hangers to reduce waste, there are also companies out there selling reusable fabric bags that double as laundry duffles for carrying soiled clothing to the cleaners and then turn into hanging garment bags for carrying clean clothes home again. (See drygreening.com and thegreengarmento.com)

How to make this even simpler? Be brave and use your washing machine. It’s what I’ve done every since I picked up my daughter’s wool duffle coat from the cleaners and discovered that the top toggle button had been broken in two. The cleaners told me it was “Not their fault” so, when I got home, I ran the already-compromised coat through my washer’s wool cycle to see what would happen. It came out fine, of course, and needed only a quick touch-up ironing. I haven’t been back to the cleaners since.

I realized immediately that I could not only save money this way, I could save on chemicals. It turns out most garments that say “Dry clean only” can be laundered at home. Buy carefully. Look for clothes that will wash well at home. Stay away from fiddly fabrics, beads, and sequins. Turn garments inside-out before washing or put them in zippered fine-washables bags before they go into the machine. Wash using the wool or gentle cycle on your machine, then air dry garments to avoid dryer shrinkage. You can also hand wash garments in the sink and then spin dry them in your washer before hanging them up to dry.

I haven’t yet found a way to clean men’s suits at home, but I’m working on it…