Greenwashing and CBC #5: Vim PowerPro Naturals

Continuing from last week with #5 on the CBC Marketplace "Lousy Labels" greenwashing list is Vim PowerPro Naturals.

As I mentioned every week, Marketplace is a 22 minute show and they did a 10-product countdown, giving them an average of 2 minutes per product, so they had to leave a lot of information out.

Vim PowerPro is, according to the manufacturer's product page, "made with 98% naturally derived ingredients including fermented citric acid."

Marketplace says that the word "natural" is totally unregulated, and without an ingredients list, they can't know what that 98% natural claim actually means.

As usual, I went looking for the MSDS, but couldn't find one online. Marketplace says they asked for an ingredients list and got "only" an MSDS, which isn't an ingredients list. Funny, that's where I've been getting my ingredients lists for this series. Wish they'd posted it. It is possible that the Vim MSDS contains only the chemicals regulated as hazardous, which is what the law requires. Most companies (whose MSDS's I've seen) put all ingredients in the list, although I have seen some with only the regulated ingredients.

So, no MSDS for me, and no ingredients list either.

But—I did eventually find a candidate for an ingredients list.

Greenwashing and CBC #6: Eco Collection bath mitt

Continuing from the previous entry in this series with #6 on the CBC Marketplace "Lousy Labels" greenwashing list is the Eco Collection bath mitt.

As I have mentioned each time, Marketplace is a 22 minute show and they did a 10-product countdown, giving them an average of about 2 minutes per product, so they had to leave a lot of information out. This series is me looking to see what other information is out there.

The Eco Collection bath mitt is, according to the manufacturer's product page, a natural bamboo fiber and natural cotton product. They claim antibacterial properties for the natural bamboo fiber, and that it's made using rayon from bamboo.

Marketplace claims that bamboo can be grown sustainably but requires "funky chemical processing" to make a nice soft fiber, and the product package is unrecyclable vinyl.

This may well be the shortest segment they did of the ten—basically saying the above, then moving on. (I didn't time the segments.)

So, I'm going to look at exactly what's so "funky" about the chemical processing required to turn bamboo fiber into rayon.

Arsenate: love it or hate it?

Science makes yet another super-interesting discovery that started from a "wait, that's weird" moment. One which was initially misinterpreted, too.

So a while back there was a big splash in the news about some bacteria which had been isolated from a lake that was quite high in arsenic, where said bacteria—and other creatures—were thriving despite the arsenic.

It wasn't just that the bacteria could live in an environment containing arsenic, as there were already known bacteria which "breathe" arsenate; it was that the initial tests seemed to show that the bacteria could grow in the absence of phosphate, by substituting arsenate for phosphate.

This last conclusion turned out to be incorrect. However, the bacteria could still thrive in lab environments where the phosphate to arsenate ratio got completely absurd—as long as there was a trace of phosphate there. That in itself was pretty strange, because arsenate is a deadly poison.

Greenwashing and CBC #7: Simple Green All-Purpose Cleaner

Continuing from last week with #7 on the CBC Marketplace "Lousy Labels" greenwashing list is Simple Green All-Purpose Cleaner.

As I mentioned last week, Marketplace is a 22 minute show and they did a 10-product countdown, giving them approximately 2 minutes per product, so they had to leave a lot of information out.

So, first things first: the Simple Green MSDS.

Greenwashing and CBC #8: Obusforme EcoLogic Countoured Pillow

Continuing from last week with #8 on the CBC Marketplace "Lousy Labels" greenwashing list is the ObusForme EcoLogic contoured pillow.

As I mentioned last week, Marketplace is a 22 minute show and they did a 10-product countdown, giving them approximately 2 minutes per product, so they had to leave a lot of information out.

Interestingly, when I went to the ObusForme website to see how they were promoting the EcoLogic pillow, I couldn't find it there. Looking a little closer, Marketplace contacted the manufacturer to see what they had to say about it, and it turns out the EcoLogic line is no longer being marketed in Canada.

Oh, Marketplace. Why would you pick a product that isn't even being made anymore? Surely there are products still being actively marketed that are deserving of your "lousy label" sticker.

Oh well. Might as well look at it anyway. I don't know much about memory foam, and why pass up a chance to learn something new?

Greenwashing and CBC #9: Sunlight Green Clean Laundry Detergent

Continuing from last week with #9 on the CBC Marketplace "Lousy Labels" greenwashing list is Sunlight Green Clean Laundry Detergent.

As I mentioned last week, Marketplace is a 22 minute show and they did a 10-product countdown, giving them approximately 2 minutes per product, so they had to leave a lot of information out. I am the CC so I am filling the (chemistry side) gaps, to satisfy my own curiosity.

As always, I start with the MSDS to get an ingredients list.

Greenwashing?

Just this past weekend, CBC Marketplace did another one of their consumer product reviews, digging into the reality behind the marketing claims. This one is of special interest to me, because I'm both a chemical engineer and and an environmentally conscious person, and it demonstrates pretty clearly why a lot of people believe that combination isn't possible.

This episode was titled Lousy Labels: Home Edition (video, 22 minutes; text summary of their findings) and tackled "greenwashing", or overblown claims of being environmentally friendly, specifically on household products.

Since it's a 22 minute show and they covered ten products, that leaves about 2 minutes per product. There's a lot they had to leave out to fit inside that time limit.

So, because I am interested in learning, interested in being environmentally friendly, chemically inclined, and perpetually looking for something interesting to write about, I decided to take a closer look at these products.

Oh, and since I'm a chemical engineer and some people will be suspicious of me because of that, I will state up front that I have no relationship with any of the chemical products or companies talked about in this show. I don't do consumer goods, I do industrial scale environmental cleanup type stuff.

I'll do them in the same order that Marketplace did, which means I will start with #10: Raid EarthBlends Multi-bug Killer.

Reshaping heat transfer

The last step in production from my home bioreactor is to heat the mixture to a specified internal temperature, about 95-98C. The first few times I tried, I followed the instructions exactly and it worked great.

Then I decided that the final shape of the product when following the instructions was not as convenient to me as I would like. Using a different shaped container was in order. However, this different container was not only a different shape, it was not conducive to pre-heating and had nowhere near the capacity for storing heat and holding its temperature as the original, inconveniently-shaped container did.

I tested it out anyway, and while it did produce a final product of about the shape I wanted, the characteristics of the material in the centre had changed. It was usable, but not as easily so. I eventually figured out that it hadn't heated up right through as it should have. I tried heating it for a slightly longer period, but that didn't seem to make much of a difference.

Trial and error will take far too long. Clearly, this calls for some math.

Labour day

A day to acknowledge labourers, in which people with office type jobs get a day off work and sleep in, but labourers in industrial or service type jobs don't.

Go figure.

Yeah, no post today. See you next week. I promise math next week :-)

Computer researcher

Looks like computers are opening up even more areas of chemistry!

Earlier this year I posted about some software that can predict crystal growth conditions.

Now, there's new software coming out that can predict organic chemistry reactions.

Organic chemistry isn't my field, so unlike the crystal software I probably won't be able to justify a purchase to my boss, but I can still think that this is pretty amazing. The researchers spent a good solid ten years putting the sum total of all organic chemistry knowledge from the past 250 years into a database.

Not only can the computer search possible reaction pathways to make whatever compound you want, you can also filter those results. For example, pathways that use only non-toxic ingredients, or pathways with fewer reaction steps.

In one excellent example, the software came up with what they're calling a "one-pot" reaction for an asthma drug, which is normally produced with four separate reaction and separation steps. The suggested one-pot reaction said that they could put all the ingredients in the same flask in a specific order with specific timing—but with no separation steps, which are often complicated and expensive—and get the asthma drug they wanted—so they tried it.

It worked.

This software sounds like it can lead to the truly ideal case that chemical engineers wish for: faster, cheaper, and safer all at the same time. There are a lot of reactions that use dangerous chemicals, because we don't know of alternate reactions to produce the same thing. Sometimes, research eventually reveals an alternate; for an inorganic example, the production of sodium hydroxide used to involve mercury, which is very toxic even in very small amounts. Now, the mercury process is rarely if ever used, because better and safer processes have been found.