What have we gottten ourselves into?

We are one of five Madison families selected to participated in year long Greener, Faster Challenge.

We have made a commitment to reduce our energy use to 40% below the Madison average. ( the good news...we are already 20% below, the bad news: we have done all the easy stuff already)

The challenge officially begins in August.

We will be working on goals related to
-energy use
-water conservation
-travel
-eating local and organic
-reducing our trash and increasing recycling

We took some steps to get better in each of these areas when we started this blog. But this challenge is more public and puts us in friendly competition with 4 other families. And there are prizes involved!

More details to follow.

How good is your sun screen?

Right after I bought sunscreen to take up to the cabin I found out about the Environmental Work Groups' (EWG) 4th annual sunscreen guide. (Thank you Willy St Coop!)

The two sunscreens I bought didn't rank very well.
Banana Boat is rated "Caution" because of poor UVA protection, unbalanced sunscreen,and it contains vitamin A (what's wrong with vitamin A you ask? According to EWG it may hasten the growth of tumors on sun exposed skin. That's comforting.)

Our second choice, No Ad, ranks worse at "Avoid" because it contains oxybenzone (a synthetic estrogen which is absorbed through the skin...so a hormone disrupter), as well as vitamin A.

I'm not feeling great about slathering this stuff on my kids...

The good news is there is a long list of recommended sunscreens. The bad news is I don't recognize most of them..which means they are probably not available at Walgreens. But I have to stop by tomorrow..so I'm going to check out what they have.

Want to find out how good (or bad) your sunscreen is? Go to Find your Sunscreen.

Photo credit: flickr gotreadgo