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Following my last post about creating a bedroom that’s made with sustainable materials that won’t aggravate your allergies, to top it all off let’s talk about mattresses and bedding.

According to this article, it isn’t easy to recycle conventional mattresses. That’s because they have several types of materials fused together – commonly polyurethane foam, wood framing, metal coils and synthetic fabric. Some companies have made a business of mattress recycling, such as this one in the Montreal area. For a mattress to be considered greener (unlike polyurethane, which is made from petroleum), it should be made from a natural material, not be treated with chemicals and it should be durable.

I’ll be honest and say that I’m not sure about the sustainability of foam mattresses made from natural sources, such as soy foam and latex (rubber). Soybeans and rubber trees are renewable resources, so it appears that the source is better than a conventional mattress. As long as the mattress hasn’t been treated with flame retardants, it’s less likely to off-gas irritants as polyurethane does. And memory foam mattresses made with solid foam are much more efficient to ship: some can be rolled up into a surprisingly small package, making the carbon-per-unit from shipping significantly lower than a conventional mattress.

So far, soy foam and latex are looking pretty good, but I’d keep a couple of things in mind. First, a lot of mattress companies use a small amount of soy, mixed in with polyurethane. Second, I’m not sure that they are biodegradable in the way the manufacturers claim. I’ve yet to find a solid study showing how soy foam biodegrades, but if a mattress can live in your bedroom, beneath warm, moist bodies for six or eight hours a night, how is it that they wouldn’t biodegrade as you sleep? My guess is they would take a very long time to biodegrade in landfill, and it’s not clear what they become as they break down. If you like the sounds of a

Want an alternative to natural-sourced foam? Perhaps a mattresses made from a mix or organic cotton and wool, used in combination with metal coils, is right for you. Here’s one one from Grassroots. Ikea also makes its Sultan Heidel mattress with a large portion of natural latex and untreated cotton.

Above the mattress, I’d say go for fabrics made with organically grown fibre, most commonly cotton, although hemp and linen are also good choices (particularly for duvet covers). While conventional fabrics aren’t typically hazardous to us, the pesticides used to grow the crops are often harmful to the agricultural workers, the groundwater and any area watersheds, and they can persist in the soil for a long time.

To keep your mattress clean, look for an organic cotton mattresses cover. Assess the options for durability, because you should wash the cover often in extremely hot water to kill dust mites, then hang it on the clothesline in the sun.

Organic cotton sheets and duvet covers in fine threadcounts are now fairly easy to find; if you prefer a raw look try these or these.

What to adorn that bed with? Well, from an allergy point of view, contrary to what we sometimes show in beautiful magazine spreads, the fewer pillows the better. Pillows and shams just collect dust, and that means doing a lot of washing!

It’s begun. As the rain drizzled down in Toronto yesterday, I could feel my eyelids swelling up just a bit, and by midday I was definitely stuffed up. Spring – and allergy season – has begun. Over the years I’ve learned that, particularly during allergy season, having a clean bedroom — free of dust and chemical irritants — means I’ll start the day feeling much more like myself.

In my experience, there are a few important bedroom elements to control in order to control your allergies:
- The flooring, wall covering and other materials you’ve used to finish the room
- The furniture, drapes and other furnishings
- Your mattress and pillows
- Your mattress cover, sheets and pillow cases

As usual, when I look for better choices for the Earth, I also find better choices for my own health. I’ll share what I’ve learned about finishes and flooring today, and move on to mattress, pillows and bedding tomorrow. Maybe you’ll have some of your own tips to add.

Design elements of a cozy, eco-friendly, allergen-free bedroom should generally made with natural materials, they should be easy to dust and wash and they should be durable. Here are a few areas that make a difference:
- Ventilation. Bedrooms can get stuffy at night. If you wake up to humidity on your windows in the cooler months, you have excess moisture (it must be all that heavy breathing). You might need a heat recovery ventilator. This heat exchanger works with your central heating system to maintain fresh air and keep humidity in check while reducing heating costs.
- Windows. Thwart window-frame mold from moisture buildup by installing vinyl or fibreglass windows, and insulate and caulk thoroughly around the frames. Check the Energy Star ratings before you buy to ensure you’ve chosen a highly energy- efficient window.
- Flooring. Several kinds of flooring may emit irritating, sometimes harmful gasses. Volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, are common in carpets, engineered wood products such as plywood and particleboard, finishes like paint and stain, fabrics that have been treated with fire retardants, and other materials. Avoid potential irritants and do the Earth a favour by choosing Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified solid wood flooring, or Low-E engineered flooring made with sustainable materials such as wood, bamboo or cork. While wool rugs are a good environmental choice, any sort of carpet can trap allergens.
- Drapes. I have a street light outside my window, so if I didn’t have blackout fabric behind my drapes, according to this Homemakers.com article, I wouldn’t sleep as soundly. Whatever window coverings you choose, make sure they’re easy to wash. I’ve found plastic venetian blinds really difficult to clean, and I doubt they’re recyclable.
- Furniture. Avoid furniture that can absorb moisture and harbour dust, forgoing stuffed chairs for those made with wood, steel and washable fabrics. Skip particleboard furniture (most furniture is now made with particle board with a face of wood veneer) unless you know it’s low emission (Low E). Low E composite wood furniture is getting easier to find, with retailers such as Ikea on board. Don’t forget about antique shops for wood and brass beds frames!
- Paint and wall coverings. Although there are many beautiful wallpaper designs out there, keep in mind that some wallpaper isn’t paper at all, it’s vinyl! Vinyl off-gasses VOCs. Flocked paper is back in style, but it’s hard to dust! If you have allergies, choose smooth, low-E glue, washable paper or simply apply a low-VOC paint. For a better night’s sleep, choose a matte finish — it will help absorb light.

Keep in mind that if you already have some VOC-emitting materials in your home, most off-gas fairly quickly, particularly if you have a source of ventilation (open the windows). Furniture you already have is better for the environment than new stuff.

For more ideas on getting ahead of your allergies, check out the April issue of Homemakers magazine for the story “Survive the Sneeze Season” by Lesley Young.

See you tomorrow for green mattress and bedding tips!

So, we’re not really sure how to reduce carbon in a systematic way. There are lots of theories; several countries have proposed a cap and trade system. What’s that? This video offers an explanation.

The Story of Cap & Trade

With the weather in double digits here in Toronto, it’s temping to feel that spring is on the way! I thought you might like a few ideas on how to green up your front yard… and beyond!

1. If you enjoy eating meat, consider preparing a few meatless meals each week, and buy beef, pork and poultry that were raised locally. In a study discussed here, livestock give off methane, a greenhouse gas and large-scale farming may negatively impact habitats and surrounding water quality.

2. Help your electricity supply cut the amount of energy it has to have on hand. That means that they could reduce or eliminate dirty energy sources, such as burning coal. Do household chores that require more power outside of peak times, from making meals ahead to showering to doing the dishes.

3. Get your fingers dirty! Plant native perennials, particularly drought-tolerant flowers, grasses and shrubs that provide food and shelter for insects, birds and more. Look up native plants for your zone here. For a guide to starting seeds, have a look at Canadian Gardening.

4. Spring clean your energy use! Get a power monitor like this one and use it to find out how much power your heating and cooling equipment, appliances and electronics draw (in watts) and how much they cost you to operate.

5. When it gets warm enough to work outside, spruce up your outdoor living space. It takes some elbow grease, but by cleaning, repairing and protecting your home’s exterior, your deck or patio, your outdoor furniture and other outdoor features, you’ll prolong the life of wood and other materials. The long they last, the more you’ll keep in your wallet – and out of the landfill.

Do you any ideas for living lighter this spring?

In this land of abundant water, can we see it as a precious resource? I’d like to think so, but, at least in my city (Toronto) as lately as last summer l saw people out cleaning their sidewalks with a hose.

Perhaps a name change will help. It’s my understanding that the City of Toronto water services staff are working on changing the way they talk about the city’s most essential service. Instead of talking about “water” they’re trying to talk about “drinking water.” The city points out that what comes from our taps is better than what comes in some individual bottles (it’s more closely monitored). They’d like us to think of that pure, perfect, healthful water we see in advertising messages, and to curb the immense amount of energy (and money) used to process and deliver it, stop using municipal water where purity isn’t critical. Like in our toilets and on our gardens.

I did a little research and found out that rainwater is actually very clean in terms of pathogens, but the level of industrialization in your area likely affects its pH. For a helpful backgrounder on acid rain, click here. Acid rain may diminish the health of your plants, so I’m going to find out whether there’s anything homeowners using rain barrels can do to neutralize the pH of the water.

As I’m planning what I’d like to add to my garden this spring, I’m certainly looking for plants that don’t need drinking water – they have to be able survive from what my rain barrels can provide. For a terrific list of native plants that can handle less watering, have a look at the current issue of Homemakers magazine. “Grow a Greener Garden” by Deanna Dority offers beautiful ideas for drought-tolerant flowers, grasses and shrubs. She also describes moisture-savings ways to set up your garden’s soil and mulch.

How is water regarded in your home town? Do you think uses are shifting, or is water just so abundant we shouldn’t worry about it?

Do you have a vision for greening up your town? Does your municipality want to add to its “urban forest”? Tree Canada and the TD Friends of the Environment Foundation have a new program called Green Streets designed to help municipalities grow their green assets.

According to their website, they’re interested in proposals about urban forest planning, innovative demonstration projects showcasing individual trees or a forest, workshops on policy and best management practices, educational programs on arboricultural practices, innovative tools to protect and maintain the urban forest, planting techniques, and urban design that showcases “green infrastructure” (which they define as the use of trees, shrubs and other plants as an integrated part of urban design such that the environmental health and quality of life for communities is maximized).

There’s immense value to adding tree to the urban landscape, of course — they cool our streets, they clean our air, they provide some sources of food and shelter to birds and other creatures, they absorb water and retain soil. But beyond that, trees and other natural elements are essential to our well-being, according to the theory of biophilic design.

I first came across this term last week while at a talk with Steven Peck, president of Green Roofs for Healthy Cities. According to the book “Biophilic Design: The Theory, Science and Practice of Bringing Buildings to Life” by Stephen R. Kellert, Judith Heerwagen, Martin Mador, (Wiley, 2008), “Looking at biophilic needs as an adaptive product of human biology relevant today, rather than as a vestige of a now-irrelevant past, we can argue that the satisfaction of our biophilic urges is related to human health, productivity, and well-being.” The book lists all kinds of positive impacts of having contact with natural spaces, from improved worker productivity to better recovery from illness and major surgery.

So if you have an idea for how your municipality — perhaps in tandem with another neighbouring area or a local environmental group — can improve your urban greenscape, get your application in for the Green Streets program by April 6.

Talking to some people from the City of Toronto water department last weekend, I was impressed to hear them advocate for natural and certified cleaning products and personal care products. Because, of course, they head down the drain and into the waste system, go through some filtering and treatment, but many still head out into Lake Ontario.

According to this Environment Canada report on the preponderance of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in Alberta rivers, “In general, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and synthetic fragrances (musks) are detected most frequently and at the highest concentrations… Future efforts for AENV will include a focus on polybrominated diphenyl ethers (flame retardants) and perfluorinated compounds (surfactants) in major rivers, riverine sediments, and aquatic biota of the province.”

Studies can take time, but we all depend on our water supply. As I’ve heard many times lately, we all live downstream from someone.

What can we do? Well, the folks from Toronto’s water department suggest using benign cleaning agents such as baking soda and products that are EcoLogo certified. (I’ve tested many of these, and I haven’t come across a certified product that doesn’t perform well.) But it’s not just cleaning products that go down the drain: don’t forget about dish and dishwasher detergent, laundry detergent, shampoo, body washes… and all the products you’re washing away, like fragrances and makeup.

Because what goes down comes around.

Have you made a green cleaner, or tried one, that really works for you?

Landfills are a thing of the past. Trouble is, they’re a thing of the present too. And future, whether we like it or not.

One of the seminars I attended at Saturday’s Toronto Stewardship Forum was about the new book HTO (Coach House Books, 2008, $24.95), a history of Toronto’s relationship with water. One of the book’s editors, Wayne Reeves, talked about how Toronto has used its waterways over the years, explaining that, today, the city is trying to resuscitate and reintegrate ecological features around waterways to better deal with rain water (and, of course, to create a healthier city).  But a key challenge for the city is its historical landfills.

Just like the landfills we’re creating today, dump sites of 50 and 100 years ago are in areas we consider acceptable (OK, maybe  tolerable is a better word) for that sort of use. It turns out that, even up to the 1950s, Toronto’s ravines were used for dumping garbage. And guess what? It’s still there, taking up space, interrupting local ecology, and it’s today’s problem and the city tries to mitigate chemical runoff from whatever people here threw out all those years ago.

So where should we dump our garbage? I’d say nowhere. I think, like Japan and many other places, we should see our garbage as fuel. Everything that’s left after recycling and claiming materials should be used to power modern, non-polluting incineration plants (even gasification), or processed in biodigesters, set up for small populations. That way we’ll reclaim power for use locally.

What do you think, can we eliminate garbage?

This Saturday I took part in the Toronto Stewardship Forum, a one-day event put on by the city of Toronto’s Parks, Forestry and Recreation dept. The morning’s keynote speaker was Alanna Mitchell, author of Sea Sick: The Global Ocean in Crisis. Through her own story of the aquatic expeditions she joined in order to write the book, Alanna laid out the effects on our oceans — and life on land as well — of burning fossil fuels and the resulting excess of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Alanna described how the global ocean absorbs CO2 and, through a chemical change, becomes more acidic, lowering the pH of the water. (Here’s a more detailed explanation.) Instead of naming this ocean or that ocean, Alanna calls all this water the “global ocean” because, as she says, they’re one connected body of water.

By 2030, Alanna says we could see the Great Barrier Reef disappear as the ocean becomes so acidic it corrodes the living creatures within it. The effect on corals has already been severe. Ocean acidification removes life. Compounding this effect, we have water temperature increases that many creatures can’t adapt to, and falling oxygen levels in mainly coastal areas of the oceans due to nutrient runoff (there are currently 407 dead zones, according to Alanna).

Ocean life is what supports all life on Earth, and ocean acidification, temperature increases and lower oxygen levels are all taking a big toll on that life. “Plankton produce every second breath of oxygen you breathe,” says Alanna.

I hope that, perhaps with additional information from Alanna’s book, you feel you’ll have a good answer to “Who know if  climate change is a real problem?” or “I don’t like winter anyway!”  Personally, I’m very grateful to Alanna for taking the time to bring the science of ocean acidification to us masses.

OK, if you’re squeamish don’t read this.

A couple of weeks ago I saw my dermatologist, and I had a mole removed. I wasn’t expecting to have it done, I just mentioned that the mole was in the way of my bra strap. My doctor offered to remove the mole right there and then. As a lay on a bench in the surgical area, green paper surrounding the offending mole, I was a little unsure of what I’d got myself into.

That feeling didn’t subside as the surgical assistant (nurse?) peeled the plastic top off of a box containing a shiny new set of specialized surgical scissors. (Panic: They were going to cut off my mole with scissors!) I tried to breathe deep so the doctor wouldn’t know I was nervous.

The micro (mini?) surgery was over in less than a minute, the only thing piquing my adrenaline was the needle of local anesthetic. A couple of weeks later, the only mark left is a pink spot that is slowly fading away. But somewhere in that time where I was lying on that bench, I had a look at all the medical gear that seemed to be single use: needles, vials, swabs, scissors and other gear my adrenaline-mired, fight-or-flight mind couldn’t identify. Thinking of those single-use scissors, made of stainless steel or some other metal fit for making a precise instrument, it struck me that although our health is incredibly important, medical waste must be taking a huge toll on the earth, not just in the landfill but in the resources required to make all that gear.

This morning on CBC.ca I noticed that hospitals are trying to find ways to reuse some equipment, after careful sterilization and so forth, of course.

Certainly there are legitimate concerns about reusing medical equipment. I worked with Homemakers magazine writer Paul Benedetti on this story about Canada’s war superbugs, and the impact resistant bacteria can have on a person’s life.

What do you think, could hospitals find ways to be lighter on the earth?