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Doggy Bag package

How to use the Doggy Bag

I’m the lucky recipient of these reuseable takeout food boxes! A friend is home from Japan for a few weeks, and she brought me this neat set of fold-up meal boxes. I love the pictograms advising me of how to use them! (Assembling a box was more difficult, but I’m sure practice makes perfect.) I can’t wait to try these out. They’re plastic, but look like they’ll hold up to a lot of handwashings. This should help me with my takeout food conundrum.

This was a great gift! Have you received or given anything that you think reduces waste in some way?

My mom’s mom, a true lady, had a little collection of soft cotton and linen handkerchiefs. She had stitched on little embroidered embellishments, so each one was a little different. She also carried a little package of tissues with her, what seems like the modern equivalent.  But I think that tissues and hankies are for different purposes!

A friend of mine who’s living in Japan right now sent me a colourful handkerchief in red with blue and gold patterns, shown in my snapshot here. She says that many Japanese women carry them to use in place of napkins when dining out. How polite!

It makes a lot of sense to me that soft, reuseable hankies be used for dabbing one’s brow or removing crumbs from one’s lips, while truly messy nose business is better left to a tissue (unless, perhaps, you have a lot of very soft hankies, and an efficient washing machine).

I’ve found that most tissues come in a box made with recycled content, but the tissues themselves are not made with recycled material. So while they have their place, I’ll try to learn from my grandmother and use hankies (with a box of tissues on hand for emergencies). I have some super-soft organic cotton flannel hankies from Grassroots. I also like 365 tissues (made with post-consumer recycled material), and I’m on the hunt for other ancient forest friendly tissues. Have you found any good ones? Are you using hankies?

I was having another look at WWF’s “The Good Life” website today, a tool that lets you track your greenhouse-gas (GHG)-saving initiatives and see how much you’ve saved over time (in terms of GHGs). I usually take transit to work and carpool home, so I asked the system to calculate the GHGs I’d save by carpooling three days a week for a month. Turns out it’s 31 kg!

When I was in university, we had a ride board in the student centre. You could post available rides by destination, and you could post rides wanted. I picked up other students a couple of times, and not only did the money I charged help out with the gas, it was nice to get to know some new people. Have you tried a carpooling program with people at your school or in your office? How does it work?

Produce Bags

As I noted in a previous post, now that I can compost, and I can recycle a lot of plastics here in the city of Toronto, most of what’s left in my garbage is plastic wrappers and bags. Since having that close look at my garbage bag, I’ve been trying to reduce the amount of plastic that goes into it. While at the Green Living show this weekend, I came across Credobags’ produce bags, so I bought a large one and two small ones to try them out. They’re made in Canada and they’re basically organic cotton mesh bags. I’m sure they weigh a little bit more than the thin plastic bags at the store, but I’m willing to pay for the slight weight difference in order to avoid the plastic.

The bags are a result of Judy Lazar’s entrenpreneurship – Lazar began making these a couple of years ago when she saw a hole in the market. Her bags are made by women in Montreal (from Turkish cotton), including by newly immigrated women who’ve sought out the non-profit “Les Petites Mains” as a way to find work in their new home. (See the Montreal Gazette story here.)

I’ll give them a try and tell you what the checkout cashiers think of them!

Have you found ways to avoid bringing extra plastics into your home?

I had a great time at the Green Living show this weekend. It’s a rare treat to spend eight hours or so meeting dozens of people who are dedicating their lives to a healthier way of life. It’s a show of good ideas, whether you’re talking to the farmer who produces organic milk, the inventor of the energy recovery device or someone from a local community food centre who’s cooking up gournet nibblies from local food alongside the some of the city’s celebrity chefs.

As fantastic as all the ideas and initiatives were, I’d been set up for the day with an urgent reminder. I got to the show just in time to hear Stephen Lewis speak on climate change and its health effects. As is typical of his style, I think, Lewis promptly woke us up from our green living daydream. “All of the hybrid cars in the world, and shows like this… will never collectively prevent and environmental disaster,” Lewis said, calling it a “monumental delusion” to think that these inclinations will prevent global warming.

Lewis went on to say that global warming events, from creeping shorelines to tsunamis, loss of habitat to crop failure to water shortages to millions of displaced environmental refugees are beginning to take a major toll on our resources. To prevent global conflict and massive suffering from the health effects of climate change, we have to act immediately to massively reduce our carbon output – on the order of 70 to 90 per cent by 2030.

I usually put habitat protection and diversity of species first when I’m thinking of the environment, thanks to my love for the natural beauty of the Thousand Islands, where I grew up. But here’s Lewis telling me that I have to put global carbon output first, because everything I love hinges on that. It’s hard not to turn away from such a complex, global problem. Lewis says we have to act, and that means pushing for political change, now. He is hoping that the next UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this October will bring major change, but after seeing the emotional highs and lows around the Kyoto accord, it’s not enough to cross our fingers over one event. We’re going to have to ask for more, now, from all levels of government.

How should governments deal with the carbon problem? Stop looking for one perfect solution. “I suspect it will take a mix of a carbon tax, carbon cap and trade and sequestration,” said Lewis. And, he said, we have to look at nuclear energy, “in a dispassionate and clinical way.”

Lewis’s talk might sound discouraging, but it wasn’t, really. He’s right, I’ll have to try to contact political changemakers about making carbon reduction top priority. But I do hope that that means opportunity for green jobs, for invention, for putting value back on our natural world, not as a “resource”, but as a refuge. And Lewis left me with one centralizing idea against which I can measure my green living decisions. It’s all about the carbon output.

Have you contacted your municipal, provincial or federal representatives about making change in your community? What happened when you did?

Poll results released Tuesday by the TD Friends of the Environment Foundation show that 92 per cent of Canadian households feel that they have a “Chief Environment Officer” within the home, and that the majority of these “CEOs” are women. After children (26%), respondents said that the second strongest influencers on their own environmental behaviour are spouses (21%) followed by parents (12%).

I guess I’d say that in my home, my partner and I share the responsibilities. I’ll think more about cleaning products and furnishings, where he contributes equally to seeking out locally grown, organic food and to researching effective energy-saving ideas.

The poll also asked people to rate their household’s environmental friendliness: 18% rated their household as an “A” while 61% gave their household a “B”. Only 2% gave their household a failing grade with an “F”.

I think I’d give my house a C right now, but with a few insulation projects complete, hopefully it will rate at least a B+. What would you rate your place, and why?

Since 1990, the TD Friends of the Environment Foundation (FEF) has provided $47 million in funding to nearly 18,000 grassroots environment and wildlife projects across Canada. In 2008, TD FEF provided more than $3 million in support of over 800 projects. Thousands of TD customers and employees donate to TD FEF on a monthly basis and TD Bank Financial Group contributes over $1 million annually. TD also covers the management costs of running the fund.

I hope you’re having a great Earth Day! Perhaps it’s a day to think about our impact on the earth. But I hope it’s also a day to celebrate the beautiful world we have, and to step back and remember how much we have to protect. After all, why worry about being “green” if not in an effort to preserve the lush biodiversity of our oceans, lakes and rivers, our forests and all the other habitats that support life.

For those of us who live in cities, connecting with the natural world can seem a bit difficult. A patch of grass in a small urban park is nice and all, but I wouldn’t call it natural. I love to leave the pavement behind by going on a long hike (staying on the path, of course, to avoid trampling fledgling plants); going sailing, and wondering at the power of the wind, listening to the boat quietly cut through the water; and snow-shoeing or cross-country skiing in winter, a great way to catch a glimpse of birds and animals. These aren’t things I get to do very often, but I find thinking of past excursions is very centering.

Since Earth Day falls on a weekday this year, I’ll have to get outdoors after work. I’m planning to spend the evening with friends, hopefully in my backyard (hello, sun?) enjoying the twittering of birds (yes, that’s analog twittering), all the green things popping up in the garden after the last rain, and just the fresh feeling out being outdoors in spring. We’ll enjoy some good food together and wash it down with a local beer.

Yesterday, my mom (in conjunction with several community organizations) got about 60 school kids together in the Frontenac Arch area and held an Earth Day Summit including a poetry contest she’d promoted at all the area schools over the past couple of months. Mom was really thrilled at the great poems the kids wrote about the earth, and I’m proud of her for helping the kids make environmental thinking part of their outlook.

If you are looking for way to connect with the natural world around you today, why not join people in your community who are hosting tree plantings and community cleanups. Go to earthday.ca to look for events near you.

Why don’t you tell me what you’re planning to do, or great activities you’ve heard of?

It seems like Earth Day will stretch through the weekend: The Green Living Show is on here in Toronto from Thursday to Sunday, down at Exhibition Place. I enjoyed every square metre of the show in its first and second years, so I can’t wait for Year Three to start. The show has a huge range of green-living ideas for transportation, home energy, sustainable agriculture, backyard habitats, land conservation, renovations, green cleaning, beauty and fashion, and all kinds of other things.

My first stop will be to the on-site electronics recycling centre. I don’t have a lot of stuff to get rid of, but apparently Samsung is running an recycling centre at the entrance to the show on on April 24th from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and April 25th from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. If you bring something to recycle, Samsung will give you a $2 rebate on your show ticket.

I’d really like to catch Stephen Lewis on the main stage on Saturday, speaking on The Health Impact of Global Climate Change. The show has an impressive roster of speakers over the four days, and I bet Lewis will be a highlight. I’d also love to see Homemakers contributor Alanna Mitchell, author of the new bestseller Sea Sick: Global Oceans in Crisis.

After I’ve had a look at most of the Green Living Show, particularly at some of the home renovation ideas, I plan to go to the Grapes and Hops Tasting Pavilion. I don’t recall this feature in former years, but what’s not to like about a chance to sip local wine and organic beer?

If I sound like a kid in a candy store, it’s just that I’m excited at the chance to be among a crowd focusing on solutions, on pushing ahead with tomorrow’s technology today. Can’t make it? If there’s anything you would like me to scout for on your behalf, just post a comment to let me know! And don’t worry, I’ll tell you about all the neat stuff I find.

Earth Day is only two days away! I’m trying to have a closer look at what I can do to reduce my impact on the earth at work, at home and when I’m out and about.

I’m excited to be part of a new green office committee at work (I work for Homemakers magazine,, alongside the staff of other magazines at Transcontinental Media). We’re just getting started and evaluating what we can do, but I think if we focus everyone’s desire to work more reduce our waste and adopt lower-impact, healthy ways of doing things, we can really make a difference. We’re a pretty typical office, I think, with cubicles and offices and boardrooms and printers and a computer on every desk. So we’ll need to look at the electricity we consume, the supplies we consume, the way that we recycle, how we can support greener commuting, and many other initiatives big and small.

In my home office, I’ve turned to refillable writing instruments to reduce waste. I’ve saved up sensitive documents (hopefully no one needs to see my 1998 tax statements) and offered them to my parents as fire-starters for their fireplace, rather than using a shredder. I’ve switched a fluorescent light bulb to an LED model (it has a lifespan of over 5,000 hours), and I use a laptop, which I understand draws a lot less power than a desktop computer. (I’ll have to use a power monitor to give you some exact numbers!) I use rechargeable batteries in my flashlight, camera and other devices. All of my chargers are on a powerbar so I can easily turn them off. These are little things, but hopefully they help make a difference!

Have you made changes to make your workplace, or your home office, more sustainable?

Over the past five or six years I’ve really changed the way I clean. When I moved into my first place of my own and when it was time to clean the kitchen and bathroom, I’d reach under the sink for something to annihilate germs. I’d usually waited too long between clean-ups, so I had a fight on my hands. I figured I was doing what I’m supposed to do if I scrubbed the heck out of everything with something with a strong smell, something that required I wear gloves.

It’s amazing how a mild case of asthma changes all that. I began noticing that strong chemical smells, whether from cleaning products or from overpowering cologne, left me a little short of breath. I think there’s a real health-environment connection in cleaning products, and it occurred to me that choosing to use substances that are healthier for me might also mean they’re healthier for the people who make the products, all the way through to the downstream end of my drain.

These days I try to  to cut the elbow grease required by cleaning more often, and instead of reaching for a bottle first, I usually vacuum major surfaces and wipe everything down with a microfibre cloth. I follow up by using a mild surface cleaner to de-grunge anything that looks like it needs it, accessing tight spots with an old toothbrush.

I’ve begun testing various kinds of “green” cleaning products for Homemakers magazine, favouring those that bear the EcoLogo symbol, as well as those that are made with natural ingredients (particular if they’re all listed), those that aren’t tested on animals, those in minimal, recycled or reuseable containers, and those that are scent-free. Are there other criteria you use to judge whether a cleaner is really a better choice?

My first surprise in testing these cleaners is how well I like the dilutable all-purpose cleaning products. I thought I’d find these a hassle, but it makes a lot of sense to me that they come in a super-concentrated form, and you can dilute them as much as you like to create a solution that’s right for the job. I put a little directly on a sponge to try to cut through some grease on my glass stovetop, and it worked brilliantly. I created a weak diluted mixture to clean a textured tile on my kitchen floor, with sparkling results. Spray bottles are convenient, but they don’t offer the same versatility of the dilutable product.

While I’m trying to clean greener these days, I’ll admit that for really messy cleaning jobs, I usually turn to paper towels. Paper towels made from 100 per cent post-consumer recycled paper, that is, like those from PC Green or Cascades.

If you’re looking for natural cleaning products you might already have at home, check out eco-friendly cleaning products from Homemakers.com.