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As an editor at Homemakers magazine, I receive a lot of promotional material, including from many manufacturers making green claims. Part of what I do is sort through those claims and look for those initiatives that are truly making a difference. Sometimes I think the most effective programs are those that make it easy for people to act en masse.

Someone at Avon has recognized that South America’s Atlantic Rainforest, which extends through parts of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina, is a global treasure that’s been highly affected by human activity. Generations of sugarcane and banana plantations, logging and urban encroachment mean that, today, less than 10 per cent of intact forest remains. That affects native flora and fauna, and globally it effects every one of us, since rainforests are a key oxygen provider and carbon sink. What are they doing about it? Making it easy for every one of their customers to buy a tree, for only $1, that will be planted by The Nature Conservancy in an Atlantic Rainforest reforestation project. The program is underway in 60 countries worldwide.

This might sound good on paper, but what makes this program great is that it has already surpassed its goals, and the company is sticking with it. In March, the Avon Hello Green Tomorrow Campaign set out to plant one million trees in the Atlantic Rainforest. In just 80 days, they were able to virtually double their initial pledge, now reaching 2 million trees, through $2 million in support. The tree-planting program is part of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign. (If you’ve planted any trees, you can record them on this site as well!)

We all know that a company’s own activities are a big part of their environmental footprint. I was glad to hear that Avon has also adopted a paper policy, called the Avon Paper Promise, which aims to purchase 100% of its paper from certified and or post consumer recycled content sources within ten years, with a certification preference of Forest Stewardship Council. I hope they are able to beat that pledge too.

As I noted in yesterday’s post, it’s really disappointing when the messages of peaceful protest being shared during the G20 meetings get cast aside by violence, be it from vandals or from police. And it’s very sad to see one’s city look like a conflict zone, with tear gas, rubber bullets used, windows broken and property desecrated.

For a few days, Torontonians are getting to see what it feels like to live with instability, with our parks co-opted for gathering places (sorry birds and urban wildlife), our transit system partially offline, our property is at risk, our typically calm law enforcement acting with aggression toward unarmed civilians.

Maybe this kind of disruption is something we should all experience, so we can better understand the urgent need for peace in areas where war is marginalizing the health and potential of residents and natural resources are too urgently needed to be preserved for future generations. But, like all those in downtown Toronto today flashing the peace sign and advocating calm, I simply hope for peace for all of us.

I love being part of a peaceful protest, in which a crowd of people, enabled by police support, send a message about a particular cause, such as tuition costs or climate change. The radical groups that like to use these events as a platform for violent acts — as shown by today’s G20 protest events in Toronto with people throwing bricks through windows and setting cars on fire — destroy public willingness to understand what peaceful protestors are there to achieve.

People have come from around the world to tell the G20 that they want action on poverty, environmental issues including climate change, affordable housing, peace in conflict zones, clean drinking water — many, many important issues that deserve to be understood. In the case of environmental issues, today’s vandals have thrown away those messages like a brick through a window. Their actions have escalated police response, and according to all kinds of tweets, police behaviour toward all protestors has become aggressive, with many arrests and pepper spray, even in the designated protest area.

It’s just not very Toronto. In a city that’s so good at respect for diversity and just getting along, I think those of us who live here were hoping that visiting protestors would catch our vibe and skip the kind of chaos that ensued at the WTO meetings in Seattle in 1999. It sounded like our police, and those visiting, were understanding the importance of the public’s right to a peaceful protest. Perhaps I’m just naive. But now that a small group of people have gone and made a mess of our city, a city that’s by no means paved with gold but that still manages to be a safe place to live, no one should be surprised at the attempt to squash protest. For those skeptical of protests in general, today’s vandalism just reinforces the idea that “you just can’t work with these people.” And it’s probably not over yet.

I only wish that peaceful groups would challenge and expose non-peaceful groups instead of letting them try to blend in, like the hoodie-clad people who broke windows down Yonge St., then apparently changed their clothes. And I hope that these events don’t ruin the tenor of Toronto, for people thinking about vacationing in this fabulous city and the summer festivals and parades that are scheduled.

Next time, Mr. Harper, please have your big fancy meetings by video call. You’ll create a vastly smaller carbon footprint — and you’ll save us all a big headache (not to mention a billion bucks).

I’m not sure if this American robin is just extra fluffy or if he’s been enjoying a few too many beakfuls of suet, but I loved spying on him having a thorough wash in my bird bath last week.

Here are a few things you can do to make your yard a haven for birds:
- Change your bird bath water daily, using fresh, cool, potable water. Birds benefit from clean drinking water. As they are bathing they are also casting off mites along with dirt, so refreshing the bird bath water will help them get cleaner while also preventing mosquito eggs from developing in the water
- Make sure that the water in the bird bath is no more than three inches deep and that the base of the bird bath isn’t too smooth, a problem in ceramic styles. Birds need to be able to get their footing. Consider adding a piece of screen or some small rocks to the bird bath if it’s too slippery or deep
- Position your bird bath beyond easy reach of predators. Pedestal models or bird baths that sit within larger water feature work well
- Avoid using any chemicals in your yard. Birds are doing you a favour by eating insects, but they’ll be affected if those insects have come in contact with a pesticide
- Hang hummingbird feeders filled with sugar water and seed bells or feeders with a wild bird seed mix
- Make sure that any bird houses you hang are out of reach of predators and have sufficiently small door openings, as noted in this article
- If you have a cat, put a bell on it!
- Grow native, fruit-bearing trees and shrubs, key habitat for birds
- After seeds have flowered, leave the seed heads intact. Birds will eat some of them!

Have you had any interesting birds visiting your yard this year?

According to the feds, everything they’ll be doing to manage the G8 and G20 will be with minimal environmental impact in mind.

But, given what’s been done right in front of us, that’s hard to believe. Crews uprooted trees in the G20 area in downtown Toronto, as noted here. Apparently the trees will be replanted later… I’ll have to survey the G20 area in August to see how many are alive. So much for Toronto’s efforts to increase its urban canopy to 30 per cent coverage by 2020.

Perhaps the best way to express displeasure at the handling of the G8 and G20 events is to plant a protest tree! For a guide to selecting a tree to plant near roadways, have a look at this article. For a guide to native trees of Ontario, check out the MNR site.

Have you seen evidence of environmental damage from the G8 or G20 preparations?

Although I was absolutely thrilled at the prospect of a pedicure appointment with two of my best friends, I showed up at the spa with some trepidation. I’m not afraid of spas or having my tired soles massaged into bliss by strangers — it was the fact that the spa appointment was to celebrate one friend’s upcoming birth day. She’s due in three weeks! And I did not want that baby — or my friends and I — to be exposed to anything toxic.

Most nail polishes contain formaldehyde, a certain carcinogen according to the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, and toluene, a chemical irritant that can cause liver and kidney damage. True, exposure would be brief, and although I was worried about it I didn’t want to spoil the fun.

I needn’t have fretted. Fortunately the spa had the good sense to protect its customers — and just as important, its staff — from toxic nasties. It had found a line of nail polishes free of formaldehyde and toluene (the brand is “Sparitutal” – I’ve never seen it before). The bottle says the polish is “vegan” and shows that it’s not tested on animals. Once I learned that, there was nothing to do but fret about my favourite polish colour, and sit back and enjoy the spa pedicure with my friends.

I figure I’d take advantage of this chance to have pretty toes without the bad smells, so after the toe treatment I bought a bottle of nail polish to take home. Here are my glossy red toes as they appeared post pedicure.

Have you been upgrading your beauty cabinet lately? Let me know about your healthy beauty must-haves!

If you’re like me, and millions (billions?) of others, you’ve purchased furniture at Ikea. I’ve found that their sofas and armchairs have good structure and it’s great that they’re made using low-emission materials and without flame retardants (as noted here), so they don’t off-gas nasty toxins. That makes for a healthy home (and a greener manufacturing process).

The only thing is, furniture gets dirty. And sometimes those stains just won’t come off. That’s where Bemz comes in. The company makes covers for a wide range of Ikea sofas and armchairs, including models where the Ikea cover isn’t removeable and washable, like Klippan, shown here with a gorgeous, washable cotton cover in Cinnabar Red. (I love this fabric!) Bemz has dozens of colours, patterns and textures of fabrics. So if you have an piece of Ikea furniture that just won’t come clean, don’t put it on the curb, just give it a new life!

Have you found a great way to rejuvenate your household furniture?

Some say that it’s not worth rescuing birds and other wildlife affected by the BP oil spill, and the new oil spill in Utah. Apparently many of the birds will be so traumatized by the experience of being affected and by being handled that they won’t live very long. Some will instinctively try to return to their now soiled, toxic home. Some may survive but will not create any offspring. All of this is logical, but after seeing those pictures of birds still alive while mired in oil, doesn’t it make emotional sense that they be given a fighting chance?

Maybe when we’re deciding whether we need to care for injured wildlife, sometimes we have to look beyond what’s logical and consider what’s emotional. We humans are vast beneficiaries of our earth’s resources, I would say at the expense of other species’ right to exist. (Of course, I’m thinking mangroves more than mosquitoes, but luckily I don’t get to choose.) But many people want to be stewards of this earth, and many people have volunteered to help clean up the Gulf of Mexico.

Hopefully those teams of experts and volunteers aren’t helping the affected wildlife just to make us all feel better, feel that something is being done, while prolonging birds’ agonizing existence with no hope for recovery. But it does seem that at least some of these birds do have a chance, and that’s where those experts have to make a call, one little bird life at a time.

Since I work in the media here at Homemakers magazine, I get a lot of stuff in the mail. After over 10 years in the business, I’ve received hundreds of packages, so by now I think I’m an expert in reducing waste in shipping.

The worst thing I ever received was a bunch of rotting vegetables and some rotting fish in a plastic basket, inside cellophane, inside a big box. I don’t even remember why it was sent to me – something about dog food ingredients, maybe – but I do remember the smell. And all the plastic packaging.

Here are a couple of photos showing the non-recyclable or just plain excessive stuff I get:

I receive a lot of envelopes with built-in bubble wrap, CDs, plastic document covers and other plastic stuff just about every day. I’ve finally found a place that recycles CDs; my colleagues and I fill up boxes of them in no time.

This big box was used to ship one very small item! At least they used paper instead of bubble wrap.

Five things to avoid when sending a package:
- Plastic bubble wrap envelopes. Some courier companies put everything in them! Ask for a cardboard envelope instead.
- Using too much tape. It makes it hard for the recipient to remove the tape so that the box or envelope can be recycled. Try using staples to seal a large envelope instead of tape.
- CDs. Just email your files. If they’re too large, upload them to your FTP server or via link on your a web site, or use a large file sending service.
- Sending perishable things or really fragile things. (See note about smelly package above! I’ve also received plants in the mail; the soil had been tossed out of the pots by the time they arrived.)
- Foam shipping peanuts. Yes, they even make these with soy foam that’s apparently recyclable or biodegradable, but the recipient still has to deal with them. Why not used crumpled used paper instead?

Here is one of the best packages I ever recieved. It was used to send a hair product that was almost as big as the box, and the product was protected with the edges of printer paper someone had collected.

The best package is entirely reuseable and recyclable. And, just as important, it contains something the recipient actually wants and needs!

Have you received anything really wasteful in the mail? How have you cut down on waste when you need to ship something?

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill continues to worsen an already horrific degradation of the Gulf of Mexico’s marine ecosystem, shoreline and marsh ecosystems, peoples’ jobs (from shrimping to tourism industries) and it’s affecting people’s health to boot. It’s hard to know how the environment and the people in the region will recover, and how long it will take. It’s no surprise there are many people, from environmental groups to musicians to politicians, asking us to boycott BP.

Certainly BP is responsible, not just in failing to prevent the explosion that is allowing the release of oil into the water, but also in using toxic chemicals into the water as part of their cleanup effort. But while a boycotting messages make sense, I don’t think BP is solely to blame. I’m sure an accident could cause an equally horrible problem, say, off the coast of Newfoundland or in our fragile Arctic.

Perhaps it would make more sense to direct our energy to our governments. They should legislate oil companies away from ecologically sensitive areas and out of zones where cleanup is difficult to do. And they should aggressively move us away from an oil-based existence, creating jobs in green energy technologies so that communities can transition from jobs in the oil industry (on oil rigs, but also in the tar sands). This is the time to shift people to transit programs and electric cars, and fund research into alternatives to plastics and other essential goods that have us hooked on oil.

What do you think, is a BP boycott effective?