Overview/Background...

As any seasoned EI (or just plain aware and responsible person) will be able to tell you, the dependency on the non-toxicity and truth in disclosing contents in American products is less than nil. It is in fact (and definitely proven) that the current illusions concerning labeling, sale at "natural food stores" and deceptive "natural" or green labeling and advertising are intentional (often diabolical) deceptions which an EI, sensitive to formaldehyde, ddt, solvents and synthetic chemicals can quickly regret.

Body care and laundry products are particularly poignant examples of just this dilemma and the government's (which we finance...and the less observant still trust) blatant and criminal failure not only to protect citizens against corporate/industrial poisoning, but also to protect their rights to lie is graphic.

The singular, most poignant example of this is a long-enduring struggle by a valiant, dedicated and seasoned E.I. aiding a fledgling who mistakenly believed the labeling on 20 Mule Team Borax not to contain pesticides...but who was sure she reacted to pesticides and was definitely reacting to the use of this product...which many of us have done...as a substitute for the toxic commercial laundry products conventionally available.

Note here, that it is a common joke among aware E.I.'s that none of us can or would even walk down the isle in a grocery store where laundry detergents, fabric softeners and antistatic products are displayed. The level of toxification in solvents and fragrances has become so invasive in these products that even about 50% of the second hand clothing bought in thrift stores (because we can't handle the out gassing of new, synthetic solvents) have to be thrown away after airing and repeated laundering in nontoxic solutions...because the chemicals they have been washed in become permanent or nearly permanent in the fabric. One mattress pad I personally acquired was laundered six times and aired outside in the sun for three years. It still smelled like a Asian bordello on Saturday nite.

In the instance of the 20 Mule Team Borax, the elder EI (thank god) was wary and seasoned enough to pursue the proof of pesticides in the borax...which advertises itself as being an effective insect control agent. After six months of contact with myriad officials at the manufacturer (including the CEO),,,all of whom insisted no pesticides were in the borax...a skillful questioning of a lower echelon chemist finally revealed that she was right. Pesticides were added to the borax...why?...somehow it needed to kill ants. (It's the American way you know...or at least the way corporate/chemical sponsored government works). Under Federal guidelines, the listing of ingredients many of us mistakenly still depend upon for protection and selection...is not required to contain any ingredients the manufacturer considers inert or a trade secret....as in DDT as the secret silver bullet for a cleaning product advertised to repel spiders. Go figure...just don't get sucked down the tube.

In the final analysis...and in the season where the chemical manufacturers have been soundly walloped by the EI and environmental community...the only real assurance any of us have of product safety is to make the product ourselves from products we harvest or acquire from personal sources. The same is true of many products sold under green labeling or in natural food stores...they carry little assurance of authenticity...and even if one does test through today, the next bottle you buy may be the one where the manufacturer sold out to Proctor and Gamble, who kept the trusted label and substituted their own petrochemical soup.

That leads us to "Brining" of native alkali salts as a basis for EI safe detergent after Borax, Arm and Hammer Laundry Detergent, Baking soda and just about every other commercial product has failed.

At the beginning of this development and research ( six months ago)...that same seasoned EI swore testimonial to an EI-safe laundry line called Grandma's. Thankfully, the development and research for the native life style (made from products native to the region) solution continued. Last week I announced to her that the Brining was up and running. "Thank god" she replied...Grandma's just went out of business". This pattern is so typical of good quality products. The large corporate manufacturers who lobbied freedom from toxic information labeling standards also have the capacity to buy out or sabotage any real manufacturer who attains public trust and a safety record launching their product into a significant competitive market share. Are they doing it? Why would we waste our time finding out? We could be making our own and turning a major water quality problem around too.

How?

Well, if you made it this far...you'll probably read the rest.

Large Scale Environmental Impacts

Hang on for just a bit while we zoom back for the big picture on the Colorado River Basin. Note here that workable, synergetic solutions never evolve from the level on which the problem exists. Coming from a higher one will inevitably admit the inclusion and direction which solves myriad other problems simultaneously to finding our own needs legitimately met.

The region of the Smart Shelter Network contains some of most prolifically saline (salt-ridden) sedimentary geologic formations in the United States...the world, for that matter.

It is common knowledge that the Colorado River is one of the "dirtiest" in the world...that is, it carried sediment and dissolved minerals and salts from those ancestral sea deposits which make its waters tangy to taste, crusty to the skin that's bathed in it, a problem to the down stream domestic water users (LA, Phoenix, Las Vegas) and will kill crops when they are irrigated with it.

The United States has such a problem with this that there is a pressured treaty with Mexico for us to clean up those sources before the water hits the Mexican border. When Mexico has an environmental problem with the US...there's a problem.

Millions of dollars in research and pilot projects have been spent with the predictable results coming from academia and the federal government...which is "nada".

A large scale laundry detergent industry which extracted the salts from the Morrison formation, the Mancos Shale, etc. (those are the worst) and used them as value-added industry base (so the economy drives the environmental invective...instead of vice versa) would do two things:

a. It would desalinate the Colorado River.

b. It would divert river born contaminants from petroleum based toxic laundry products to a neutralized salt base...which was already there in the first place.

Arriving at this change in values and industrial resource base is an ideal contribution of the Native Lifestyle-based EI. We pilot the technique on a small personal scale until the characteristics are ironed out and the technology is up and running.

It's up and running....you'll see.

Then we will all have to marry Mexicans and get them to repeat the process.

Basis

Soaps are basically salts...they're alkaline...and dissolve dirt, stains and oil by bonding with them and water and floating them away.

In commercial cleaners/detergents, petroleum/synthetic solvents are added to boost cleaning power as the demand of the laundering public becomes more and more "clean" maniac...largely as the result of increasingly deceptive and fear-based manufacturer advertising based around "dirt phobias" and leveraged with social paranoia based on appearances and sex.

Now, with the advent of a completely unregulated fragrance industry, synthetic stench products are added which will appeal to the IQ 97 and below crowd (those who voted for W. Bush...the W stands for Wrong)

The substitution of Native salts personally obtained for commercial detergents is only part of the equation for change.

The two part process for conventional laundry...detergent wash, then rinse...is replaced with the three tiered system...salt wash, vinegar wash, then rinse.

What the new process does is to double the chances any particular "nasty" will be removed from the garment.

The vinegar (which can be obtained in local produced organic in this area...in Paonia or a health food store) is an acidic agent.

First the alkali salt is "Brined" from the soil. It is then added to the laundry and round one starts. After soaking (preferably in solar powered/ "Base Line" systems), the garment is touch scrubbed in problem areas, wrung or dripped and then soaked in a vinegar wash...also warmed...then spot scrubbed and rinsed (preferably twice) and line dried.

The "Brining" is based on the biofeedback observation of the behavior of alkali naturally. If you're not familiar with the word...take a drive through the valleys of adobe around Montrose (Mancos Shale deposit). In the fields and lower valley natural drainage areas there will be found strange white areas on top of the gray soil. What has happened to this ancestral inland shallow sea deposit is that the salts it contains are buoyed to the surface by ground water and solvated from hillsides to condense in lower flats, often building salt layers inches thick. This eventually makes it to the Colorado River as a suspended salt and when drunk by tourists in Las Vegas makes them want to smoke cigarettes, drink in the middle of the day, hang out in dingy slot machine parlors and give all their children's milk money to the Mafia.

For population reduction, this is a good thing. If you are an integrity based EI trying not to have your Tide box kill you, its not.

"Brine" is a very salt-ridden water. When salts dissolve, they make the water filmy and slippery. That's why a lot of the water courses in the area have an apparent film on the surface. It's not necessarily pollution, it may just be brine.

To harvest the salts for laundry on the most primitive basis, cut a quarter section out of the curved top just below the spout of a one gallon vinegar plastic bottle. Find an alkali deposit...the thicker the better. Scoop 4 small yogurt plastic containers full of the salt/dirt. Fill with water to the top and stir. It will settle the mud to the bottom in a few hours and leave salt-ridden "brine" on top. Pour that into the laundry stew through a mesh filter, being careful not to pour any more mud than necessary...although a little won't be noticed.

Do this three or four times and you will have extracted the majority of the salt from the soil and it is now salt-ridden laundry water. Add clothes, more water and set in the sun a day....scrub, do another cycle of about 1/4 cup vinegar to 3 gallons of water...scrub...then rinse twice.

Dump the sludge in a thoughtful manner.

Be happy when you dump the "Brine" water that the salt that would have gone down the Colorado is now bound up with your sweat and released to the natural environment for health. Call Mexico and have them send you a check...or at least wild women.

Your results should be cleaner, fresher, healthier clothes with an absolute minimum of doubt about what was in the product you used.

Note...don't acquire alkali from the site of a "Nozzle Head". If you do encounter people who still are stupid enough to believe that herbicides and pesticides are safe and spray them...buy a $100 12 volt car loudspeaker that mounts by your radiator with a microphone inside , turn it to full volume when lots of the public are around and they've got their back pack sprayer going....then yell "why don't you shove that thing up your _____ and do us both a favor" into the bull horn.

It will make an impression no one for city blocks will forget and will help prevent the chances that you might accidentally entrain a toxic herbicide into your alkali brine sometime in the future.

Techniques and Experiences

(27 May, 2005),,,the "Brining" system was developed and used for about 6 months from fall, 2004 thru spring 2005. It became cumbersome and time consuming...apparently having worn out its incubation process,...and went dormant for future development...possibly ratcheting up the extraction or distillation process to reduce time and effort (not to mention the space for gadgets required in a micro...which are not a lot but significant.)

Laundry detergent reverted to Bonner's "Sal Suds" formula, apparently workable and no reactions yet until future developments take hold.

The results were very satisfactory. Clothes were amply cleaned, especially with a presoak for wring around the collar and some scrub brush action on hard spots. The smell was great, especially before the vinegar wash was added, apparently because the adobe/alkali soil used was gathered containing the fallen needles of a native plant resembling rosemary and added a wonderful natural fragrance to the wash.

....The Future (where could it go from here)

Probably the next stage of development would be to ramp up harvesting systems directly in the field and at an intermediate level of volume, possibly as a value added resource/product commodity.

What would be great would be a resourceful entrepreneur who would develop and regionally market the harvested and refined crystals.

Concepts would be to install a sink hole in an alkali field into which brine would collect and the evaporate it with solar technology for crystals, eventually bio-remediating the soil area.

In the end, an alkali harvesting industry regionally would attain the level of measurable desalination in the rivers, augment regional economy and offset toxic product use...which will, of course, end up in the Colorado.

As a Colorado River Basin value-added product industry, given the population base and volume consumption market...this is a no-brainer for industry driven environmentally remediated success.

The problem is, of course, once that was launched the corporates would either steal or sabotage it.

The solution to that is social intolerance and removal of all corporate employees and investors from our culture. You can start this at home. Simply insure that anyone even remotely involved with a corporation is not tolerated in your neighborhood, region or community. Certainly we can rely on you individual imagination to produce the techniques to get that job done.

Obviously, since they control the government, democratic process is laughably inept at protecting our future from these criminals. Only social intolerance (just as is the case with the motor-head disease) will be effective.

If you find you cannot succeed in the capitalistic/consumer/corporate world, it is probably because you can't get your brain to move that slow.

There are myriad positive attributes we can find in homosapiens...imagination, artistry, creativity, dance, communication, community dedication, environmental integrity.

Our current socio/politico/economic system rewards just the opposite. Those who have money, power and control are invariable low intelligence, conservative, repressed, vindictive, criminal, self-denying, unimaginative, incapable of change and will not reference anything but selfishness and phony sacrifice for a future they will never attain.

Their loss will not be noticed.

It is crucial to the Systems of Transcendent Governance, which will take us into the systematology which will support creativity, community, health, advancement and the environment that we create the new system of ownership, manufacture, technological licensing and retail simultaneous with the development of the new technologies similar to this one. If they don't go hand in hand, they all will fail.

An attempt for someone like Proctor and Gamble to steal and develop this is a forgone failure based on proper technology in the hands of the improperly degenerate. It cannot be powered into existence under a system where an over-mortgaged, terminally threatened and stressed ladder climber is coerced into generating yet another layer of coercion and lies to bring it onto the counter...which is the fuel of consumer corporate government control.

It will have to be a system in which the entrepreneur works for the betterment of community instead of the selfishness for illusory security. That would make it happen.