Eco Worrier - Times Online - WBLG

Tiddles' toilet and other stories

Q: I’m cutting back on the amount of chemicals used in my home. Is my cat litter tray a problem?

There’s been much fuss (claws out, naturally) about scoop-able cat litter trays. Their advantage is that the clay ingredient, sodium bentonite, clumps together when wet, making it easier to remove the soiled bit without replacing the whole tray. Dust in the clay, however, is carcinogenic. Although there have been no clinical trials confirming that trays are a risk to human health, if you inhale too much silica dust you could get pneumonoultramicro- scopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, which, as well as being the longest word in English, is a nasty lung disease.

Did Al Gore do it for you?

Last week, at a screening room in Soho, I watched the film heralded as the tipping point in efforts to protect the planet. Apart from a dodgy moment in the middle when swirling arrows on world maps got the better of me and I started to drift off to a place where man-made global catastrophe wasn't round the corner, Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, thumped its message home.

Mini Eco-Worriers

This week in Body&Soul, Eco-Worrier shamelessly jumps on the back-to-school bandwagon, looking at the ways that schools can brush up on their green credentials. That means parents as well as teachers nudging head-teachers in the right direction - from including the environment on the curriculum to school expeditions to landfill sites. My thoughts are below, but as someone in educational Antarctica – as far from my own schooling as I am from the possibility of going through it with my own children (yes, the life of a twentysomething is indeed carefree) – I’d love to hear about other strategies from proper parents.