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People are always asking if little eco actions matter. Well there’s a new tool out there to show you that they do, and quantify just how much they count.

That’s good news, because after a long day of reading news stories and tweets (I’m @ecologicjess by the way) about the horrible thing happening to our earth right now, the latest being the nasty oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, I sure need to feel that something’s going right, that there’s a chance to make a difference.

@WWFCanada tweeted about their new tool, Eco Guru, yesterday, and I just tried it out.

You can use this little app (also available free for Nokia phones) to either “Green your lifestyle” or “Calculate your carbon footprint.” I tried the former, since I’m always looking for new ideas and I know that WWF is terrific at providing actual data about what’s green, greener and greenest.

I created a “to-do” list of green items, then noted what I’ve already done. For example, I often close many of our home’s blinds at night to conserve heat and, in the summer, to reflect heat. Eco Guru responds, “If 75 more people act this way, it would be equivalent to enough energy to provide lighting to 3520 families for a year.” When I noted that I use a green electricity supplier, Eco Guru said, “If 35 more people did this, your combined effort would be equal to saving a forest the size of 56 football fields.” Wow!

Have you found ways to look past today’s bad news?

So apparently the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico cannot be cleaned up with robots, it cannot be contained by booms and the 159,000 litres a day it is spewing into the Gulf have contaminated the water are about to destroy ecological sensitive habitat across 37 kilometres of Louisiana coastline.

No, it really couldn’t get much worse. Oh wait, did I mention that they’re setting fire to it? It can’t be contained, so to try to mitigate the effects on that coastline we’ll burn that oil, releasing a tanker load of CO2 into the atmosphere (not to mention black, sooty smoke). Super. The best of bad options, I suppose.

But we are hooked on oil, over 80 million litres of it a day, so in spite of the terrible environmental and health effects of sourcing it, transporting it, burning it and making it into endless amounts of stuff, we’re looking for more places to drill. Going beyond off-shore drilling platforms such as the one that blew up on April 20, we’re looking at places we’d previously passed over. Like our Arctic, a fragile place that’s not as closely monitored as, say, Miami. This, in spite of the fact that, according to this interview on CBC’s The Current, typical oil spill clean-up methods don’t work in cold temperatures.

Could this awful technology make renewable energy look any better? I hope that companies and NGOs and community groups and municipalities all use this horrific, dirty opportunity to push for renewable energy projects. We have a clear, heart-breaking example of what happens when the blueprint for sucking oil from the earth doesn’t go as planned, and we have lots of great renewable energy technology. And yes, applied robustly and distributed near where it’s needed (power lines lose electricity over distance), renewable energy can power our world.

Before the price of grid energy gets prohibitively expensive, we need to build our way to affordable energy in the future with installations big and small, from offshore wind farm projects to municipal laws requiring green roofs with solar and wind collection depending on location to incentives for homeowners to install solar voltaic, solar hot-water and other technologies on our property.

For those who think that wind turbines and solar panels are an eyesore, please turn your eye to the black smoke over the Gulf of Mexico for a moment. Maybe I’ve lost my mind, but I think they’re just symbols of progress.

What do you think, do renewables have a chance? What will make it possible for us to rely on them?

As I mentioned a few days ago, I’m trying a seed-starting experiment. It’s a contest of sorts, to see which seeds will sprout first, and which ones last through the highs and overnight lows of spring. I planted a few kinds of tomatoes, a couple of wildflowers, an herb, an annual flower and some lettuce.

So far, the annual flower, Nasturium, was first up, but couldn’t take the cold. (Perhaps it will resurface, but
I doubt it). Now the clear winner is the wildflower, the Blue Vervain. (That’s it at the back, on the left side.) It was wise enough to wait a bit longer to reach up to daylight, but now it has several stems unfurling toward the sun. Close runners up are my tomatoes — all of them sprouted around the same time, including a sprout from seeds I harvested from a (delicious, Quebec-grown) commercial grape tomato and three heirloom tomato varieties, including brown grape, green grape and yellow plum.

We shall see if the tomatoes survive cool nights coming up, if the Blue Vervain survives transplanting, and whether or not that Boston lettuce surfaces at all! Based on this test, in 10 days or so I’ll start planting more of the top-performing seeds.

Have you started your seeds yet? Do you have any advice on transplanting the fragile seedlings? And I have a contest for you: The first person to tell me about their seedlings or offer a tip will win a copy of “Natural Living: The 21st Century Guide to a Sustainable Lifestyle” (Gaia, 2010) by Liz Wright.

When I buy a new cell phone, computer or other electronic device (which doesn’t happen very often, in spite of the fact that I consider myself a bit of a tech geek) I don’t always get rid of the old one right away. Often I pass on still-serviceable devices to friends and family, and I’ve donated a few things, but some just sit around. (As do chargers, adapters and other cables.) Over time, those bits and pieces of technology — and those that are simply obsolete, like my old tape player — just take up space. To free up some space and get this stuff into the right hands, I did a little research on the best ways to recycle electronic waste.

- If you’re in Toronto, you can attend this weekend’s Green Living Show for free if you bring electronic waste to recycle. You can recycle computers, TVs, old modems, cell phones, pages and more. The complete list is here.

- When you buy a new computer, some manufacturers will take your old computer for recycling. Here’s what Apple does, and here’s what Dell offers. Before you buy a new machine, ask the company if they’ll take your old one.

- Some programs, such as the Inorganic Market program, will refurbish usable equipment for charitable purposes.

- Batteries come in just about everything — cell phones, headsets, computers, MP3 players, cordless tools — and then we have the AA, AAA and other batteries we use in solar lights, milk frothers, flashlights, toys — you name it. While rechargeables are certainly the best environmental choice, at some point they’ll no longer take a charge. Click here for information on where to take batteries to recycle them.

Have you found a great way to recycle your electronic waste?

It’s Earth Day, and like, say Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, it’s a symbolic opportunity to celebrate the diversity of the natural world. In my view, it’s a day to recognize places — call them biospheres, ecosystems, habitats — places where the natural world resides, from that pond near where you grew up to the vast tundra of our North.

Places that are under pressure from our growing, spreading populations, our need for food, water and minerals, our desire for exploration and stuff. Places that need us to respect them, to enjoy them without fissuring them into small pockets, to simply leave them alone.

Here are 7 ways to celebrate this beautiful diversity on Earth Day:
1. Take a walk at your local park or conservation area. As they say, take only photos, leave only footprints. Stay on the path and keep your dog on a leash.

2. Get to know some of your natural neighbours. Identify some of the birds in your area with this tool for birds and this one for frogs, toads, turtles and other amphibians.

3. Wage war on an invasive species. If you’ve got hog weed, gout weed, garlic mustard, dog strangling vine, water hyacinth and others noted on this helpful government website, learn how to effectively get rid of them, and how to avoid unwittingly transporting them to new places.

4. Grab a bag and some gloves and pick up trash from your local park. Some wildlife confuse litter for food, and plastics and other substances can’t be digested. Here are a few tips from an earlier post.

5. Get your hands dirty. Yes, you could plant a tree, or a shrub, or a wildflower or a groundcover. Whatever you plant, make sure it’s native! Here’s a terrific source for finding plants suitable for your area – and whatever other criteria you can think of, and here’s a gorgeous slideshow of native wildflowers. I bought native columbine plants last night and I’ll plant them in celebration of Earth Day when I get home.

6. Enrich your habitat. If you have a yard, you have space that could potentially support wildlife. Give birds, butterflies, dragonflies, bees, small animals and other creatures a hand by offering water (i.e., a bird bath), hanging a bird house, putting up a feeder with food suitable for native birds, planting fruit-bearing native plants and, of course, avoid using pesticides and other chemicals outdoors.

7. Donate to an environmental group. Pick a group that does work you care about, whether it’s your local land trust that’s protecting sensitive ecosystems from development, your local biosphere reserve that’s working to build a sustainable community, a waterkeeper’s group that’s keeping an eye on the health of a lake or a larger group that’s lobbying for change and educating us all on with the environment, all of these groups could use your help!

How do you celebrate our earth, on Earth Day or any day?

I hate tradeoffs. I want to retire wealthy AND have peace of mind. I may never have the former, but I can try for the latter.

I want to keep my investment money out of nasty crimes against the environment, such as the iconic tar sands project (this week the Canadian government became the target of new allegations of failure to enforce pollution controls brought forth under the North
American Free Trade Agreement). I’d like to avoid retiring on money made from mines, be they Canadian or international, regardless of how well they’re run. Mining may be a fact of life, but I’d prefer to support other things!

So how can I make sure I’m enjoy post-paid-work life without helping companies scrape away mountain tops for coal? It’s not easy, especially since part of my money must go to a company pension plan that does not offer options geared to the ethical investor ( to be fair, I don’t know of any pension plan that does offer such an option).

Here are a few ways I’ll try to buy green investments:
- First, I’ll continue to make my home my primary investment. Experts I’ve consulted agree that, particularly while interest rates and investment returns are lower, this is my best strategy. My partner and I are trying to pay off our mortgage as quickly as possible so we pay as little interest as possible, and we’re making our home much more energy and water efficient so more of our money can pay down the mortgage.
- I’m a low to moderate risk investor, so I tend to stick to GICs and lower-risk mutual funds. If I’m investigating a new mutual fund to purchase, whether it calls itself ethical or not, I’ll have a look at the portfolio via Morningstar (a free tool), particularly the per cent of stocks held in the energy, resource and industrial sectors. Morningstar also offers helpful ways to review a fund’s performance.
- I’ll look out for company’s environmental, social and strategic governance (ESG) statements, a way of evaluating their values, and I’ll look for investment opportunities through those who have signed on to the UN’s Principles for Responsible Invesetment (PRI). Canadian signatories are linked here.
- Where I’m stuck with a small choice of funds to choose from, as in the choice of my pension, I’ll choose Canadian equity funds that have primary holdings in Canadian banks. I know that banks do invest in traditional energy companies, but hopefully this will reduce my exposure to them. If I’m ever part of a group determining the setup of a pension plan, I’ll consult this terrific toolkit.

I’d really love a simple rating showing how ethical every investment is, or at least every fund. The lack of criteria or some kind of standard means it’s all too easy to turn a blind eye to the dirty secrets within our financial holdings.

Now that air traffic has been suspended for several days, eco weenies like me will start talking about the benefits to the planet because the Icelandic volcano is emitting only about 1/23rd the amount of CO2 of the European aviation industry would (if it were running at capacity), according to Gizmodo. I say this while one of my best friends is stuck thousands of kilometres away from home! I don’t deny that, in our modern world, people need to travel, and more relevantly, we can so we do (some of us buying our carbon offsets in hope).

I do wonder, however, if the short-term shortages on store shelves across Canada could help us all see what we really shouldn’t have. I’m talking about super-perishable foreign goods, such as exotic flowers, tender fruits and vegetables and other goods that can’t be brought in from across the globe any other way but by (temperature-controlled) air (then trucks), because of their short lifespan. These are the goods many of us avoid buying already. But considering the environmental cost of bringing in perishables on a daily basis, should we as a nation stop buying them? And if so, how would that be possible on the large scale – through laws, or taxes, or what? What do you think?

It’s national volunteer week in Canada, and many of us are thinking about how we can help the places we love to thrive through community volunteering. Some projects are easy, such as cleaning up litter (sorely needed along roadsides, as I noted recently) and planting a few trees (as long as you plant the right species of trees in the right place). But some very valuable community improvements require a bit more organization – and some cash.

I’ve been collecting information on grants for ecological / sustainability projects available to individuals and community organizations. I received some information from Hellmann’s last week that seems to fit the bill. The Hellmann’s program comes in response to their Real Food survey, conducted by Ipsos Canadian Online Omnibus, which shows that 90 per cent of Canadians prefer to eat locally grown foods. Eighty-nine per cent prefer to buy products that support the real food system in Canada and 92 per cent prefer to purchase products that contain more real ingredients.

To support these desires, Hellmann’s is offering $100,000 in grants for projects supporting “real food” in Canadian communities, defined for the survey as “authentic food that is made with simple, natural ingredients.” The grant website, linked here, suggests projects such as creating a community greenhouse, setting up a real food school lunch program or organizing an event or festival, and other activities that “support initiatives that bring Canadian families and kids together with real food in their community.” Families, school groups and community groups have until June 30 to apply.

In addition, Hellmann’s has committed to helping local producers by using 100 per cent Canadian free-run eggs for its “1/2 the Fat” dressing.

What would you do in your community, given a little funding?

Homemakers writer Jay Somerset had a close look at greenwashing in Canada in the November 2009 issue of Homemakers magazine. In the opening of his piece, Jay notes, “More than 98 per cent of of so-called “green” products sold in Canadian retail stores make some sort of false, misleading or unsubstantiated eco-claim. After all what’s stopping them? Terms such as environmentally friendly are not regulated; any product can be labelled to appear eco-friendly.”

It appears that our government is trying to deal with greenwashing, or at least our concerns about greenwashing, by providing industry guidelines, linked here. Non-binding suggestions, really, these guidelines come from the CSA “for informational and non-commercial purposes only.”

It’s a mine field. Take the ubiquitous recycle symbol, or “Mobius Loop”, for example. What does it mean to you? According to the guidelines, the public thinks it means “something to do with recycling.” What does the guide advise? “Any of the four versions of the Mobius loop shown above can be used to mean either recycled content or recyclability of the product, provided all the specifications of those two claims are met, as described in Clause 5 of this Guide.” Right. We’re not going to try to break out new symbols to clarify this, just maybe add small type to explain it.

Still, I think the spirit of the guide is in the right place, and if were actually set of legal binding rules, the world would be a better place. Here’s the section I would call the aims of the guidelines. I’ve bolded a few keywords.

“CAN/CSA-ISO 14021 sets out eighteen specific requirements applicable to self-declared
environmental claims, which are listed below.
a) shall be accurate and not misleading;
b) shall be substantiated and verified;
c) shall be relevant to that particular product, and used only in an appropriate context or setting;
d) shall be presented in a manner that clearly indicates whether the claim applies to the
complete product, or only to a product component or packaging, or to an element of a
service;
e) shall be specific as to the environmental aspect or environmental improvement which is
claimed;
f) shall not be restated using different terminology to imply multiple benefits for a single
environmental change;
g) shall be unlikely to result in misinterpretation;
h) shall be true not only in relation to the final product but also shall take into
consideration all relevant aspects of the product life cycle in order to identify the
potential for one impact to be increased in the process of decreasing another;
NOTE This does not necessarily mean that a life cycle assessment should be undertaken.
i) shall be presented in a manner which does not imply that the product is endorsed or certified
by an independent third-party organization when it is not;
j) shall not, either directly or by implication, suggest an environmental improvement which does
not exist, nor shall it exaggerate the environmental aspect of the product to which the claim
relates;
k) shall not be made if, despite the claim being literally true, it is likely to be
misinterpreted by purchasers or is misleading through the omission of relevant facts;
I) shall only relate to an environmental aspect that either exists or is likely to be realized, during
the life of the product;
m) shall be presented in a manner that clearly indicates that the environmental claim and
explanatory statement should be read together. The explanatory statement shall be of
reasonable size and in reasonable proximity to the environmental claim it accompanies;
n) shall, if a comparative assertion of environmental superiority or improvement is made, be
specific and make clear the basis for the comparison. In particular, the environmental claim
shall be relevant in terms of how recently any improvement was made;
o) shall, if based on a pre-existing but previously undisclosed aspect, be presented in a manner
that does not lead purchasers, potential purchasers and users of the product to believe that
the claim is based on a recent product or process modification;
p) shall not be made where they are based on the absence of ingredients or features which
have never been associated with the product category;
q) shall be reassessed and updated as necessary to reflect changes in technology, competitive
products or other circumstances that could alter the accuracy of the claim; and
r) shall be relevant to the area where the corresponding environmental impact occurs.”

Not to crow too loudly, but I think the green checklist, linked here I developed for Homemakers makes a helpful tool for companies trying to determine how they can improve the sustainability of their products. Although it’s intended to help the rest of us see past the green buzz and decide for ourselves if a product we’re considering really is the greenest option.

Are you feeling like you’re getting greenwashed? Do you think guidelines might help the situation?

I know I’ve done it. Growing up in Eastern Ontario where rural roads far outnumber multilane highways, it’s hard to avoid a death or two. But according to a young woman I met recently, it’s really important that we try.

I’m talking about those late-night drives down dark country roads, usually on a warm spring night. You start feeling the odd bump under the car, or you have trouble with traction on the corners as your tires squishily slide out. You stop and gaze out through the path of the headlights. And you realize that (gasp!) all those little rocks you’re running over are actually frogs. (Or turtles. Or snakes.)

Yes, there’s life on the roads, and according to Mandy Karch of the Ontario Road Ecology Group, the end of May and early June are when frogs, toads, turtles and more are likely to be on our roads. And, she says, that’s when we lose a significant portion of their populations. I didn’t realize that road deaths could take such a toll on their numbers, but our tires really can decimate a local population.

Karch says there are many things we can do to help reduce the number of frogs and turtles killed on our roads: Aside from simply driving less, particularly in areas with road-side natural areas and wet areas such as ditches, we can:

- Avoid driving at dawn and dusk when wildlife is active

- Pay attention and refrain from using distracting electronic devices, so we can avoid hitting wildlife

- Pick up litter, even biodigradable food items, since they are a hazard and they attract wildife to roads

- When safe, move wildlife off the road

- Attend public information gatherings about local road projects, and weigh in on road development issues. Encourage culverts and other passages for wildlife under and over roads.

- Look out for wildlife (e.g. juvenile snakes) when cycling on nature paths

Beyond that, you can also report a wildlife siting to through the Ontario Road Ecology Group’s website, linked here. I think I’ll add this link to my cell phone browser so I can do this – where else – on the road.

Have you been concerned by frogs, turtles and other wildlife you’ve seen dead on the roadside?