As I learned when working on my recent post about the carbon footprint of all kinds of things, we can really reduce the amount of C02 we’re responsible for if we choose vegetarian fare more often, particularly produce from local sources.

So while I’m on vacation this week, I’m going to leave you with a few vegetarian recipes that make great lunches, courtesy of the Homemakers Test Kitchen. And when I get back on Monday, April 11 I’ll be doing a draw at 10 a.m. EST for one terrific set of lunch products from Otterbottle [Update: contest closed! Congratulations to tcpalermo!], including the Insulated Food Containers $21.99, Insulated Drink Container, worth $23.99, the
Insulated Tote Bags, worth $19.99, and the Waterbottle, worth $19.99. It really is a fantastic prize pack! You can find these and other Otterbottle products here; a portion of each purchase goes to the David Suzuki Foundation.

Vegetarian lunch recipes from Homemakers:
- Smoked Gouda and Pepper Sandwich with Curried Cauliflower Salad
- Tuscan Broad Bean Salad
- Florentine Pasta Salad
- West Indian Sweet Potato and Chick Pea Roti

Look for more recipes using our search tool at the top right of the screen.

How do you save waste when packing your lunch? What do you like to pack for lunch?

My lunch today. Nothing disposable!

Every once in a while I take a look at the way I live and I try to identify habits I could change that are good for the earth and good for my health and wellbeing. I see this not as avoiding eco guilt, but as making change that makes my life better, because, as David Suzuki says in the recent documentary, Force of Nature, the environment is part of me, and I am part of it. Choices that protect our world enrich me, today and in the future.

Here are five things I’m trying to change in my life right now.

1. Bring my lunch. In an attempt to dramatically reduce the packaging I use, I’m going to try to bring my lunch to work every day. I’ve tried before and I can tell you, this one is a real challenge for me, but there aren’t many healthy lunch options near my workplace, and many take-out eateries still use petroleum-based packaging such as plastic boxes and cutlery, and styrofoam.
Make it fun: Bringing my lunch doesn’t mean I shouldn’t get outside for some fresh air and sunshine!

2. Make my own cuppa. I often make my own tea at work, but I’m going to do this all the time so I don’t end up with a paper cup. I’ve also brought in a jar of granulated maple sugar from Gibbons Family Farm near Frankville in Eastern Ontario. No more paper sugar packets!
Make it fun: I like to splurge on fair trade, organic tea in delicious flavours!

3. Drive OR carpool to work every day. Once in a while I end up driving by myself. I’m trying to avoid that, since I have transit and carpool options.
Make it fun: Walking is a healthier way to get there; whenever I make time to walk, I always see interesting things on my journey. I’ll try to build in some time to walk to my appointments, even if I’m just getting off the subway a stop earlier.

4. Commit to my butcher. My partner and I eat vegetarian several nights a week, but we are meat eaters. I believe it’s possible to do so sustainably, but it means ensuring that the animals were raised locally on smaller-scale farms, and it means eating beef and pork less often than fowl. I’ve found an environmentally minded butcher on my transit route home from work.
Make it fun: My butcher often has interesting marinades and spice blends I don’t use at home, so I’ll give them a whirl!

5. Review my investments. I don’t do a lot of investing – right now I’m focusing on paying off my mortgage – but I will make time to review the holdings of the funds I have to ensure I don’t own any mining and mineral stocks, nor any companies I suspect are eco offenders.
Make it fun: Well, I’m not really sure how to make this one fun, but I’ll get a sense of satisfaction knowing that I’m not investing in environmental exploitation!

What do you think? Which of our common habits is hardest on the environment, and how can we do better?

I joined leagues of litter-gatherers yesterday in the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup, a national event held each September. I registered to join cleaner-uppers at David A. Balfour park in Toronto, one of dozens of the city’s sites that were cleaned up yesterday.

I’ve never seen a bunch of people so happy to be picking up trash. As we braved the stream, muddied our clothes and broke a sweat lugging heavy garbage around, we were grossed out by what people had tossed in the park, but delighted in our achievement: making the park a nicer place for everyone and everything.

For me it was more than that – it felt really nice to be among a group of like-minded people, concerned not only with the trash but with the wildlife trying to make a go of it in a city ravine, and in awe of the natural beauty all around us. I’ll be back next year for more shoreline cleanups!

So what kinds of garbage did I pick from the mud, the stream, from among the forest-floor vegetation? All kinds of litter people had thoughtlessly tossed from a bridge, from their car, let slip from their hands. The trash included:
- Cigarette butts and filters (the No. 1 type of litter picked up in 2009)
- Plastic packaging from cigarette cartons
- Beverage bottles and cans
- Plastic bags
- Many bottles’ worth of broken glass (I really tried to pick up all the little shards, motivated by the image an fox running through the park, slicing its paw on the glass)
- Plastic straws (Remind me why we need those?)
- Bits of clothing
- Part of an aluminum bed frame
- The base for a construction sign
- Bits of plant pots, plant trays and plant markers

I often do little garbage cleanups of my own. Click here to read my previous post on the gear you need to do your own.

Have you ever helped clean up a public space?
Do you have any ideas about how we can reduce the amount of litter in our communities?

“It’s 3, 5 and 7, right? Or is it 4, 6 and 7?” “There’s a 7?” When safe plastics came up at a get-together at my house last week, and none of could remember exactly what we were trying to avoid, I realized it was time for a refresher. I’ve done a little research on your behalf to clarify which are safe plastics and which are best avoided.

No. 1 plastic is PET, or polyethylene terephthalate. Commonly used in beverage bottles, PET is generally considered safe, although some warn not to reuse it repeatedly because it may degrade over time. Eco alternative: Stainless-steel or glass bottles.

No. 2 plastic is HDPE, or high-density polyethylene. This plastic is also considered safe; you’ll find the No. 2 symbol on yogurt containers, juice jugs and in plastic bags such as those used by grocery stores and inside cereal boxes.

No. 3 plastic is PVC, or polyvinyl chloride. Found in food packaging and used in some cling wraps, there are enough studies showing concerns about PVC that it’s best avoided. Better safe than sorry, right? Eco alternative: Stainless-steel or glass food containers, or containers made with No. 1 or No. 2 plastic.

No. 4 plastic is LDPE, or low-density polyethylene. This flexible plastic is used to make plastic bags and wraps, among other applications. While considered safe, who wants to see all those bags in the landfill? Eco alternative: Reuseable bags for produce and all your shopping needs. I’m sure Eco Logic readers are all over this one!

No. 5 plastic is PP, or polypropylene. You’ll see it in reuseable food containers (not the lids, though), some condiment bottles, and it’s used to make fleece jackets, that thin, clear film that envelops stationery, and other uses. While generally considered safe, not every municipality has recycling facilities for polypropylene.

No. 6 plastic is PS, or polystyrene. Commonly used in foam takeout, egg, hot drink and other containers, as well as for meat trays and foam packing materials, polystyrene will release styrene monomer, particularly when your food is hot and contains fat. Polystyrene is unrecyclable in many areas. Eco alternative: Bring your own takeout food container or, if you ordered something dry like a pizza, quesadilla or sandwich, ask the server to put your leftovers in tinfoil. Buy your meat from a butcher who uses butcher paper.

No. 7 plastic can be a few things, but is most often polycarbonate, used to make hard, transparent plastic products, and which may contain BPA, or bisphenol-A. Like polystyrene, BPA will release from polycarbonate more quickly when heated. Eco alternative: Once again, stainless-steel or glass bottles are great choices.

Are you avoiding certain plastics?

But it’s still easy to find hard clamshell packaging. You know, the kind where you’re likely to injure yourself just trying to get it open. The picture above shows how, after working at this thick, rounded plastic showerhead package with scissors, nearly removing my thumb in the process, I’d given up. My partner had a bright idea: use our reciprocating saw. It worked!

Have you had any run-ins with packaging?

TerraCycle, in partnership with Kraft Canada, has started a “Brigade” system pays schools and non-profit organizations two cent per package to collect non-recyclable food packaging. TerraCycle has sponsorships to collect Kool-Aid Jammers, Del Monte beverages, Mr. Christie’s Snak Paks and other Mr. Christie cookies and crackers, and Back to Nature nuts and trail mixes.

I don’t have kids, so it’s easy for me to say that it would be best to avoid buying lunch foods that come in non-recyclable packaging. But I can see that, like most problems, a variety of solutions are required, and upcycling waste into other products isn’t a bad one. TerraCycle says that drink pouches will be sewn into durable containers such as tote bags and pencil cases, while cracker wrappers will be fused together into sheets of waterproof fabric, which then can be made into umbrellas, shower curtains, backpacks and placemats.

To sign up for the TerraCycle program, click here.

Have you ever bought or made something constructed with reused something else?

Pesky plastic is hard to avoid

You’re going to be thinking “Well, duh!” here, but it was a bit of an Aha moment for me when I thought I’d just look around the veggie section for things that aren’t packaged. So if I want tomatoes, sometimes I’m going to buy tomatoes on the vine, not grape tomatoes (pesky plastic boxes). And if I want mushrooms, I’m going to skip button mushrooms and go for cremenies or portobellos, and put them in a produce bag or paper bag, not buy a little blue box of them covered in plastic wrap. The store has lots of choices, from celery in a plastic sleeve and naked celery, temping Californian berries in plastic boxes or loose local apples, to even cheeses in paper wrapping or cheeses in plastic and meat in butcher paper instead of on foam trays (wrapped in plastic, sometimes two layers!).

It isn’t always easy to shop plastic-free, since sometimes there just aren’t any good choices, particularly at smaller stores that shrink-wrap everything to try to preserve freshness (and therefore reduce waste). Food packaging so quickly becomes recycling or garbage, it’s great for the earth if we can find ways to do without it.

How are you reducing the waste you bring home? Have you swapped one food for another to avoid waste?

Sure, I could get a set of matching plastic or ceramic bowls for a surprisingly small sum at any home store. They would be lovely. They would get used. They would chip, crack and eventually be tossed out. But grandma’s bowls stood up to everything she could dish out, so they’ll have no problem with my occasional baking whims. If anything, I’ll be hunting around antique shows (including the Odessa Antique Show, on west of Kingston this weekend) for a larger bowl to go with grandma’s set.

Do you have a favourite kitchen item, at home or at the cottage, that has stood the test of time?

Finally, it's recycling day

With the municipal workers strike in Toronto finally over, it’s finally garbage day in Toronto. In the first week the city is taking recycling and green bin (compost) material; next week they’ll take garbage and yard waste. As I walked to work this morning, I chatted with a few neighbours about how they dealt with the five-week strike. Most noted that they had much more recycling material than garbage. As I peeked in the clear bags (recycling overflow) that lined the streets in my neighbourhood, I noticed an interesting phenomenon: while one bag often had a lot of uncompressed boxes and cans in it, subsequent bags often had flattened boxes and cans, and there seemed to be fewer glass bottles and rigid plastic packages. Yes, Toronto, I think we learned a few things about how to handle our waste and what not to bring home.

One woman told me that a couple of her neighbours were sheepish about their lack of recycling (and bags of garbage) and asked if she would put  one of her bags of recycling in front of their house. Talk about keeping up appearances!

Here is my recycling bin, waiting for the truck. I did have some extra recycling, shown here in the bag my new rain barrel came in. I could have held it until the next cycle, but it did feel good to purge out all of the waste along with my neighbours. (Besides, fruit flies found something among the recycling.) My green bin was almost full, but I’m happy to say that we still have lots of room in our garbage bin. 

Did you do OK through the garbage strike?

Have you changed your mind about something you were going to bring home – knowing that you would have to dispose of it, or its packaging, later?

Container for snacks to go

I also have a glass lunch box from Ikea, outfitted with a silicone seal to connect the lid. I love it because it’s microwaveable, but unfortunately Ikea doesn’t offer these anymore.

How do you take your lunch to work, or pack snacks to go?