I just had a look at the label on a bottle I have, and it says very clearly that it must never be used in combination with any other cleaner or anything else because it can release dangerous gases, but that is the only warning besides don’t put it in your eyes or drink it. Otherwise it has directions for using it to clean your toilet. Everything collected separately here must say it on the label, and this doesn’t say anything about that.

You’ve mentioned before, Holland is a country full of different people. In that way, there are certainly people here that think bleach is a horrible strong chemical. At the same time, there are many people living here in environmentally sensitive areas or who have strong environmental beliefs, who use bleach to clean their toilets believing it is the most environmentally friendly thing to do.

One of the things I hated about living in the US was chlorine is everywhere. Most cities added it to their drinking water. Swimming pools used it, often in large quantities. In Holland in the last few years they have been trying to reduce the use of it. Swimming pools here use ozone instead, and it is almost never added to drinking water.

I avoid contact with it, but I have always thought it was safe when used in a sensible way. Now you have me wondering if that’s really true.

Household bleach is officially warned against, but tolerated. It’s a highly reactive chemical. Bacisly we are told only to use it in special situations to avoid threatening infections. For daily household use generel detergents are recommended substitutes. Leftovers of household bleach are collected seperately.

That’s a really interesting article. I learned a lot from reading it.

Here in Amsterdam the city uses a very high-tech and clean system for burning our trash. From this they get about 13 distinct byproducts, most of which can be recycled in some way. For example, some of these products are used for building roads or for other construction projects, some for manufacturing or agricultural(!) chemicals. In addition, enough energy is given off to supply Amsterdam with about 10% of it’s residential electricity needs.

After burning and recycling our waste, only about 2% of the original volume is left over. This last little bit is very toxic, and is mostly heavy metals and PCBs. This gets sent off to some third world country somewhere for disposal.

They say that PCBs are the biggest problem and result mostly from PVC plastic that people have thrown away. They say the only real solution to this problem is if people stop buying PVC.

Many other things are collected separately for recycling like paper, glass, compostable household waste, household appliances, computers and so on. Toxic materials are also collected separately like paints and solvents. PVC is not collected separately, it just gets burned, because there is no good alternative way to dispose of it.

A good balanced article can be found here:
http://www.thegreenguide.com/doc/98/pipe