Homes to Watershed Workshop September 19th 2pm-5pm | Lawrence Public Library Auditorium, Lawrence, KS
Chemical Cleaners | Jessica Kellner
Conventional cleaning products contain harmful ingredients. In a recent study, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) tested 21 common cleaning products and identified 457 air pollutants that can be released into the air through normal product use. Comet Disinfectant Powder Cleanser emitted the most, at 146 contaminants. The study also identified 24 chemicals in cleaning products with well-established links to asthma, cancer and other health disorders—12 of the chemicals are on California’s list of chemicals linked to birth defects, reproductive problems and cancer. Many of the products we rely upon simply aren’t safe enough for daily use inside our homes. Learn how to identify the chemicals in these cleaners, why they’re problematic and—later in the program—how to use safe, cheap and effective natural alternatives to keep your home sparkling without the nasty side effects.
Where Number Two becomes Number One - The story of the other water treatment | Renée Whaley
In school we teach kids about the water cycle – water comes down as rain, collects, evaporates, and the cycle starts over again. There’s another water cycle that that involves people treating water. We take it from the environment, treat it, use it, treat it again and then send it back. No one gives much thought to that second water treatment process – the wastewater treatment process. Maybe it’s ick factor of it all, but wastewater treatment is vital for the health of communities and ultimately the environment. The hard task of the wastewater treatment plant is that it has to treat everything that comes down the pipe, which in turn is everything that goes down the drain. But what is wastewater treatment? How clean can we get water? We’ll answer those questions and discuss what future awaits our water once it goes down the drain.
Why is my river dirty? | Dawn Buehler
When we think about our rivers and streams, we usually think about water that has fallen in the form of rain or water that is cleaned before it makes it way to the river. We think the water is drinkable (with a filtering system) and swimmable. What we don’t think about is the things that are in the water that we can’t see – the things that make their way into our rivers and streams throughout our watershed by virtue of rain events that pick up chemicals and wash them, untreated, into our waterways. Today we will focus our discussion on what we can do to decrease the amount of chemicals in our waterways and how they impact recreation.
Be careful what you flush - fish gotta live in it too! | Dr. Cynthia Annett
All along the Kansas River communities draw water out of the river for drinking water and domestic use, then discharge treated wastewater back into the river. But we’re not the only ones using that water - there is a wonderfully diverse ecosystem living in the river. Fish, frogs, mussels, birds, turtles, raccoons, they all use the water that is discharged by our wastewater treatment plants. And the truth is, no matter how good our wastewater treatment plants are, they can’t remove everything we put in the water. Only about half the prescription drugs found in wastewater can be removed by conventional treatment, and many pesticides, antibacterial and anti fungal compounds are not removed. Nor are plastic microbeads which are found in many cosmetics. All of these common household products can cause serious problems for plankton, aquatic plants, fish and other animals that live in the Kansas River. We will discuss why things that we consider benign and part of our daily lives are such a problem in freshwater ecosystems, what impacts they have on the health and well being of different plants and animals, and what we can do to help.
Your Natural Home Cleaning Arsenal | Jessica Kellner
Armed with a little knowledge and an affordable set of simple ingredients, you can design your own go-to nontoxic cleaning kit for your home. This workshop will give you the ingredients and recipes you need to keep your home wonderfully clean and smelling fresh, without resorting to harsh chemicals dangerous for our health and the health of the planet. It will include a handout with the only six items you need, recipes for cleaning everything in your home, and a few demonstrations of the simple ways to use these items.