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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!

Our computers, cameras, MP3 players and other electronic gadgets have become a little greener in the past couple of years. For example:
- Many computer and TV companies are switching from fluorescent to LED lighting in screens and monitors. We don’t yet know if LEDs will actually last longer, but they use a bit less power and they don’t contain mercury.
- Manufacturers have reduced phantom loads by cutting the power devices suck back when not in use.
- They’ve also reduced or eliminated use of many toxic materials from electronics, and some try to avoid sourcing materials from conflict zones (coltan, particularly).

But, to call themselves green, there are still a couple of big hurdles for electronics companies to cross. I got thinking about these when reading this article on the Guardian website. First, they have to try to standardize all the connectors and adapters so that we don’t need a new cord for every device. I’m talking to you, cell phone chargers! Computers, USB is a great start, but please, don’t make me buy another adapter for external monitors and projectors!

Second, electronics companies have to make gadget gear fixable. By us everyday folk. I’m pointing at you, laptops, phones and other gadgets with the built-in batteries that can only be replaced at a repair centre. And you’re not getting off completely, computers that can’t be upgraded with bigger drives or more RAM.

The more we have access to fix and upgrade our gadgets, the better and longer they’ll serve us. Couple that with robust electronics recycling (it’s happening in many areas) and we’ll make a big step toward sustainability.

Do you think electronics companies can do better?

Happy Thursday, readers!
I have a contest for you to help alleviate those January blahs. (The days are getting longer now! Really!)

I have two family packs of Otterbottles to give away in today’s contest. You could win five stainless-steel water bottles that come with both screw lids and sports caps. They are adorned with cute designs suitable for men or women.

To enter, just post a comment below about how you try to avoid excess garbage. You know, the stuff that you can’t recycle, compost, donate. The stuff that just goes to the landfill.

I’ll e-mail the first two writers to be published below regarding sending you your prize.

The white stuff is coming down like crazy across Canada — Alberta is in a deep freeze and northern Ontario is buried under several feet of snow. It’s the time of year when you hear a unique sound in neighbourhoods everywhere: the scraping and smacking of shovels and the hum of snowblowers.

This isn’t a gripe against snow blowers. While I’m sure that, someday, we’ll have electric snowblowers rather than the gas-powered variety, I don’t begrudge anyone with a lane to clear the power of a snow-throwing machine.

While I leave the snow-blowing to the city crews, this weekend I was out annoying my neighbours with that scraping and smacking. Because the temperature hovered above freezing, I really wanted to get the ice off of my driveway and sidewalk while it was softened up, so I was out peeling and scraping it away inch by inch. If anyone was trying to nap, I’m sure my efforts were not appreciated. I was actually enjoying the cold, enjoying the physical work in the brisk air.

When I’d cleared off the slippy stuff as much as possible, I thought about what I should do to keep the road grippy for passersby. While it’s common to use salt, and while it seems like a harmless, natural substance, it is actually very harmful to plants and waterways. We know from damage to our cars just how corrosive salt is, and you may have noticed damage to trees along roadways, or irritation on pets’ paws as well. Cities with drainage into lakes and rivers can really stress the waterways with all the salt going onto roads and sidewalks, as shown in this explanation from Minnesota. While cities are looking for effective alternatives to salt, and putting themselves on a salt diet, homeowners can do a few things to help.

This winter I’m trying a couple of commercial “eco friendly” ice melting / traction products to use instead of salt. Ecos Ice Melt does a good job of breaking up slippery ice patches, and EcoTraction provides good grip underfoot, as an alternate to sand. Don’t forget that the sun is on your side: anything dark applied to ice, from sand to ashes, will heat up in the sun, will to melt holes in the ice around it.

How do you deal with ice and snow around your home?

I think Canadians have a flair for dressing well, even when it’s quite frosty outside. We’ve had a very mild fall here in Toronto, but perhaps in anticipation of the first snow storm, a lot of people have adopted down coats and wool pants as wardrobe basics. Sweater dresses with tights seem to be a favourite among the Homemakers staff!

Last week I tried a new kind of tights from Silks, made with 70% recycled nylon yarn. Made in Canada, these $16 “Eco-Chic” tights are manufactured from both post-consumer recycled material and recycled “pre-consumer” material (aka factory waste). True to their name, the tights are silky and comfortable to wear, and they held up well to machine washed and drying. Silks also makes recycled yarn knee highs and tights made with soybeans.

I’ve also seen tights from other companies made with bamboo. I’m trying to understand how good for the planet bamboo really is. It makes sense to me that bamboo could be a sustainable material, since it’s a fast-growing plant that, much like hemp, has strong fibres that make for durable goods. But apparently some are clearing land such that habitats are destroyed, and that to be made into the fibre rayon, bamboo has to go through an intensive chemical process. Not so good!

Perhaps the solution here is to support bamboo producers and processors who work in specific ways. I think we can all benefit from materials made with plants rather than petroleum, so hopefully we’ll see a sustainability certification standard for bamboo (and heck, other natural fibres) sometime soon.

I’m thrilled that we have new choices in legwear. Hopefully someday when I get a hole in my tights, I can just throw them in the compost.

What’s your favourite natural fibre?

I recently heard that at the end of November, Metro grocery stores will offer their customers reuseable mesh bags for their produce (four for $5) as an alternative to conventional thin-film produce bags. Metro has 484 stores across Ontario and Quebec, so there’s potential for a lot of plastic savings. The bags are reusable, washable and stain resistant, not unlike these Canadian-made bags I blogged about earlier.

Thin-film plastic is considered the worst offender among plastic bag material, since, among other reasons, it isn’t durable enough for multiple use.

I hope grocery chains will take additional steps, such as offering starch-based biodegradable bags, so they break down safely in soil, and allocate fewer rolls of bags around the stores to discourage people from using them for everything. After all, veggies should be washed before you use them anyway. (I use a tiny smidge of dish soap.)

Metro revealed results of a customer survey showing that 77 per cent are making efforts to limit their use of plastic bags when buying fruits and vegetables, while 76 per cent said they would be interested in buying reusable produce bags. According to the same survey, 87 per cent of customers prefer to buy individual fruits and vegetables instead of pre-packaged ones. I certainly think we could do without the plastic bags on celery, bell peppers heads of lettuce and more, and I really dislike buying packs of mushrooms, since they’re in a type of plastic that many municipalities don’t recycle, topped by cellophane.

I don’t blame food producers for wanted to add something to their products. Homemakers‘ nutritionist, Rosie Schwartz has mentioned that one the reasons we have a hard time eating healthily is that packaged foods have lots of enticing images and marketing copy on them, while the healthiest food – produce – does not.

How would you reduce shopping-related waste?

Last night I breathed a sigh of relief as I walked down the paper products aisle of the grocery store. It wasn’t because I was about to sneeze — it’s ’cause in every category, from paper plates to toilet paper to paper towels to tissues, green options are now available.

Considering the volume of paper we use in our kitchens and washrooms every year, backing off our need for trees by switching to products made from 100 per cent post-consumer waste will make a huge difference in preserving forests, and thus habitat, not to mention the carbon savings. I’ve been buying PC Green toilet paper for years, but in the last year or so I’ve found that many other companies are stepping up to the plate with 100 per cent recycled, sometimes even EcoLogo certified products, including the Canadian company, Cascades, Seventh Generation, Selection, White Swan and now Kimberly-Clark brands including their “EnviroCare” line of Cashmere bathroom tissue, Scotties tissues and Sponge Towels. Now that it’s really easy to make a good choice (and even a soft, cushy choice!), let’s just hope that everyone does.

The next step: changing over entire product lines to EcoLogo-certified products, rather than considering them an option.

Are you also finding it easier to find green paper products?

My partner and I are warily embarking on a bathroom renovation. We’re skirting around it, starting with peripheral components and seeing how it goes. To give you an idea of what that means, we’re beginning our reno by repairing our downstairs bathroom first, so it will be OK to use when our other bathroom’s a mess. The downstairs bathroom has some cracked tile, and we found extra pieces of the tile in our basement (thank you, former owner!), so we’ll learn how to cut and affix tile in our “practice” bathroom first. We’ll also practice replacing a toilet. That sounds easy, but ahh, you have to choose a new toilet before you can install it!

After much review of the models at various home stores and manufacturer’s websites, and consideration of factors such as bowl shape, bowl height, insulated tank, style and colour, we wanted to consider the environmental factors as well. Luckily, most of the available toilets are now water misers at six litres per flush compared to the 13 litres some older models use. But I discovered a type of toilet that I think makes particular sense: the dual flush toilet. These toilets use half the water to do their No. 1 job, so you save a lot of water just by pressing the right button. And apparently the City of Toronto agrees: they offer $60 or $75 rebates for replacing a toilet with an efficient model, and the toilet we chose earns a $75 rebate. Even if you don’t live in Toronto, you may find their list of water-saving toilets helpful.

In purchasing a toilet, performance is the other major factor. After all, you’re not saving water if you have to flush twice. This page provides background on the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ testing standards and links to a list of performance reports by toilet model.

Now we just need to install the toilet! Let me know if you have any tips!

Yesterday I came across some research showing the links between parental environmental stewardship and the likihood that children will become environmentally minded. The research paper concluded that, “Children developed interest in nature when they had access to a safe environment and were encouraged to explore that environment by role models who demonstrated environmental stewardship.” My guess is that goes for respect for the environment in terms of daily habits as well.

One of my best friends has a baby nearing seven months, and she’s made a terrific commitment to her baby’s health, and the environment, by doing things like making her own baby food, using glass containers for everything, and using cloth diapers (cute, fancy ones from Fuzzi Bunz). When she’s away from home for a while, my friend switches to biodegradeable disposable diapers (so doesn’t have to carry dirty diapers around for ages). She likes the Seventh Generation diapers, as well as the PC GREEN diapers.

No doubt this little babe will be along for the ride on cycling, hiking and market shopping excursions, and she will learn much about the value of our earth and its natural wonders.  Of which she is one. 

Do you have a favourite childhood memory of being outdoors? Do you have suggestions for new parents about how to help kids enjoy the natural world?