Courtesy Bosch

If you’re considering upgrading an old appliance, the chart above helps illustrate how much you might save with that new fridge, washer or dishwasher. It illustrates the energy costs of operating an appliance over its lifespan, comparing 1990 appliances to those built in 2008. Whizzy new features and new functions aside, the savings from utility bills alone should convince you to make the switch.

I found that buying a modern, front-loading washing machine saved me money in another way too: the steam setting refreshes and  removes wrinkles from fabrics. I haven’t visited a dry cleaner since the new washer was installed. (And thus I’ve avoided perc and other dry cleaning chemicals as well.) I’m dreaming of a new dishwasher since, while the one that was installed in my home isn’t decades old, it’s incredibly noisy!

Bosch has added some energy and water-saving features to their dishwashers. Their ECOACTION function allows you to select an energy reduction mode, reducing consumption up to an additional 25 per cent. The ECOSENSE Wash Management System evaluates the soil level in the water via an infrared light beam and customizes the wash cycle accordingly.

When looking for more sustainable appliances, ask about lifespan, maintenance options and warranties, and also ask about how the appliance can be recycled at end of life. Ask whether there’s an appliance recycling program in place, and consider whether the appliance’s components are made from metals that are lucrative to recycle (e.g., steel, copper and titanium).

What’s your take – do you think replacing an old appliance is an environmentally friendly move?

Looking for a zero-waste, guilt free way to water your plants? I was. And finally, after having the gear to do it for months, my partner and I installed a drip irrigation system this past weekend. It’s fed straight from one of our rain barrels. If I sound smug it’s really just because I’m relieved. I find it stressful when we’ve gone more than a week without rain. I’ve planted a fairly drought-tolerant garden, but I know that my black-eyed Susans, wild bergamot, coreopsis and other native plants, not to mention the few cute annuals I’ve planted, will be much happier after a good soak.

You’ll need a few things in order to install a rain barrel-fed drip irrigation system.
1. A rain barrel. Duh. I recommend a big one – a few steady hours of rain fills a barrel to the brim. I bought this 190 litre barrel from Canadian Tire (shown above).
2. Some eavestrough elbows so you can redirect water from your downspout to your rain barrel.
3. Some stones or pavers, or some other means of elevating your rain barrel. You need to raise up your barrel in order to create water pressure.
4. Some screening. Your water will be nicer if you can keep stuff – leaves, mosquitoes, pollen – out of it. Put layers of screen over your barrel and under your downspout so you can remove it and clean it periodically.
5. A low-pressure irrigation system! I used this one from Lee Valley. It’s easy to set up.
6. An irrigation plan. Decide where to route your irrigation hose such that the water never needs to run uphill. That should ensure all of your plants get watered.

It took about 45 minutes to set up our system, and within moments of opening the rain barrel spigot my garden was being watered. I like that the slow-drip system will absorb well into the soil instead of flooding the area, washing away soil and nutrients.

Most of these plants are getting watered by the hose.

A close-up of a drip spike.

Have you tried ways of using rain water or water conservation techniques on your garden?

Looking to create more growing space in your yard this year? Maybe this is the year to let your garden take over some of your lawn.

North Vancouver mayor Darrel Mussatto is encouraging his city’s residents to make the most of their real estate by growing food on it, rather than manicure grass. According to this article in the Vancouver Sun, Citing reasons such as food security and the cost of food, Mussatto says, “We want people to convert the yards of single family homes to gardens and even commercial farms.”
The idea of converting lawn space into produce space may  horrify anyone who has spent loads of time manicuring their lawn into a perfectly groomed green carpet. After all, aren’t lawns already pretty eco? Well, sorry, but no. They’re a monoculture that doesn’t offer native insects and wildlife much in terms of food or protection. Lawns crowd out native plants that do offer these benefits. And people often dump chemicals on them (see study here showing that yes, this is still happening). That cause harm to the aforementioned wildlife, and, surprise surprise, us. So, in my books, lawns aren’t eco friendly.

Companies that use a tuft of green lawn as a symbol of “going green” are clearly disconnected from what makes a healthy planet. To read about how a grass monoculture became a ubiquitous North American concept, click here.

This is the year for me to tackle the lawn problem in my own garden and landscaping design. I have raised beds in my garden, but they only get late-day sun. I have space to grow foods in containers on my little deck, and they can get a fair bit of sun through the course of the day. If I want to enjoy delicious home-grown veggies, I’ll have to take over a lot of my little backyard lawn, which gets sun for most of the day.

Here are five steps to transitioning your lawn from a high-maintenance monoculture into a prodigious, environmentally beneficial garden:

Step 1: Evaluate your needs
How do you use your lawn now?  Will you need to do more than garden in that space? How can you accommodate other activities around your garden?

If your yard is a place for kids to play, perhaps you want to keep a large area of your yard as an open space to run around, so some drought-tolerant grass may be the best thing for you. However there are low-growing groundcovers that can create a mat of verdant beauty that you don’t need to mow. For areas that won’t see too much foot traffic, try Dutch white clover or even thyme.

Do you bring out a table and chairs to dine al fresco? Perhaps you could locate a small patio area within your new garden space, perhaps next to a tree (which can be used to hang lighting from). For instructions on laying a stone patio, click here.

To create a beautiful border to your vegetable garden, consider using lovely wildflowers. They will attract pollinators such as bees to help pollinate your veggies.

Step 2: Take stock of threats

Is your yard a haven for neighbourhood cats? (Mine is.)  You may need a structure around your veggies to prevent them from using the space as a litterbox. Are raccoons often prowling through your yard at night? Again, protect your food plants.  Raccoon contact means potential exposure to raccoon roundworm, which can cause brain damage and loss of eyesight. Front-yard gardens may suffer from road salt damage (see my earlier post about road salt here), so you may need to plant salt-tolerant plants around the border of your garden, such as blueberries.

Step 3: Plan out your space

What can you do with your new-found garden space? Plotting out your plans may help you decide what you want to grow, and where. To draft your plans, first measure the space. You could represent the area on graph paper and sketch in the garden beds, patio stones, furniture and other features on it. Or you could take a photo of the area and draw on it, either via a print out or using a program with built-in stencils such as OmniGraffle.

Image via Wikipedia

Step 4: Build your garden beds

Turning a lawn into a garden is best done by building up the space into raised beds. Use stone or wood to create boxes to fill with high-quality soil and compost. Kits for building raised beds with lumber corner pieces make building the beds quick and easy. I love the kit linked here from Lee Valley.

Step 5: Select your plants and start your seeds!
As I wait for spring to arrive, I’m enjoying buying seed packets and researching seed starting. Seed packets note when you can start your seeds and when you can plant them outdoors. Enjoy planning a mix of fruits, veggies and herbs that you love to eat. Try to include some early starters and late bloomers so that you’ll have super-local produce throughout the growing season.

Do you think you could give up a slice of your lawn for a kitchen garden?

I’d been away for three days, and although I’d watered everything from my rain barrel before I left, it had been blindingly hot and uncomfortably humid, several degrees above seasonal norms (experts say climate change is a likely contributor) . My veggies, particularly my peppers and tomatoes, just couldn’t handle that.

I used rich, black soil when I’d potted my veggies, mixed with some dead leaves and topped with a thick layer of mulch. But now the soil was compacted, likely thanks to heavy rains and then severe heat. Taking the pots into my makeshift plant hospital one by one, I tried to loosen up the soil by flexing the pots, adding more good soil and kelp meal, then adding a lot more mulch on top. I watered each plant thoroughly but lightly from my rain barrel, trying to urge the soil to absorb as much water as possible.

I’ve been trying to conserve water, saving hose waterings for long stretches of dry weather, performed at night when the water would seep into the ground and lose less to evaporation. So far this year I’ve only watered my garden this way twice. I usually just use a watering can and my rain barrel since saving water means protecting watersheds and conserving energy.

I was rewarded for my efforts: this morning my potted veggies didn’t look entirely better, but they were significantly perked up. In 30-degree heat, I think that’s all I can ask for.

Going forward, I think I’m going to keep adding a bit of good soil, some leaves and mulch to my plants, to retain as much moisture as possible. And next time I go away for a couple of days, I’ll put those veggies in partial shade. They may not get all the sun they crave, but at least they won’t be crispy.

Have you brought any plants back from the brink?

Fresh thinking on fresh water

In this land of abundant water, can we see it as a precious resource? I’d like to think so, but, at least in my city (Toronto) as lately as last summer l saw people out cleaning their sidewalks with a hose.

Perhaps a name change will help. It’s my understanding that the City of Toronto water services staff are working on changing the way they talk about the city’s most essential service. Instead of talking about “water” they’re trying to talk about “drinking water.” The city points out that what comes from our taps is better than what comes in some individual bottles (it’s more closely monitored). They’d like us to think of that pure, perfect, healthful water we see in advertising messages, and to curb the immense amount of energy (and money) used to process and deliver it, stop using municipal water where purity isn’t critical. Like in our toilets and on our gardens.

I did a little research and found out that rainwater is actually very clean in terms of pathogens, but the level of industrialization in your area likely affects its pH. For a helpful backgrounder on acid rain, click here. Acid rain may diminish the health of your plants, so I’m going to find out whether there’s anything homeowners using rain barrels can do to neutralize the pH of the water.

As I’m planning what I’d like to add to my garden this spring, I’m certainly looking for plants that don’t need drinking water – they have to be able survive from what my rain barrels can provide. For a terrific list of native plants that can handle less watering, have a look at the current issue of Homemakers magazine. “Grow a Greener Garden” by Deanna Dority offers beautiful ideas for drought-tolerant flowers, grasses and shrubs. She also describes moisture-savings ways to set up your garden’s soil and mulch.

In recognition of the fact that many people around the world don’t have access to sufficient drinking water, there are a few events coming up. Two events in support of Ottawa-based WaterCan sound interesting. Wine for Water is a gala fundraiser, taking place in Toronto on March 26. Walk for Water, on April 22 across Canada, is a six-kilometre fundraising walk led by the local Aveda salon. For more information on both, click here.

How is water regarded in your home town? Do you think uses are shifting, or is water just so abundant we shouldn’t worry about it?

What's going down the drain?

According to this Environment Canada report on the preponderance of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in Alberta rivers, “In general, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and synthetic fragrances (musks) are detected most frequently and at the highest concentrations… Future efforts for AENV will include a focus on polybrominated diphenyl ethers (flame retardants) and perfluorinated compounds (surfactants) in major rivers, riverine sediments, and aquatic biota of the province.”

Studies can take time, but we all depend on our water supply. As I’ve heard many times lately, we all live downstream from someone.

What can we do? Well, the folks from Toronto’s water department suggest using benign cleaning agents such as baking soda and products that are EcoLogo certified. (I’ve tested many of these, and I haven’t come across a certified product that doesn’t perform well.) But it’s not just cleaning products that go down the drain: don’t forget about dish and dishwasher detergent, laundry detergent, shampoo, body washes… and all the products you’re washing away, like fragrances and makeup.

Because what goes down comes around.

Have you made a green cleaner, or tried one, that really works for you?

A new way to power the gym?

Recently I’ve enjoyed thinking about how waste energy could be used to power, heat or cool other things. Some heat water with the waste energy from other utilities, for example. I’ve read about a dance club floor that powers lighting from dancers’ movement. I think gyms are the ultimate untapped resource. Here you have dozens, sometimes hundreds of people in one facility, paying to expend their energy. What if those everybody on those treadmills, in spin classes and on step machines were helping to heat the shower water, run the heating and cooling system, even power the music in the aerobics classes?

Well, gyms aren’t that green yet. The greener ones offer a lot of water refilling stations rather than selling bottled water, have timers and low-flow showerheads in the change rooms, have energy efficient (not to mention cooler) lighting, and keep surfaces clean without harsh chemicals.

I try to keep my gym experience greener by bringing my own towel, showering quickly (or at home) and of course bringing my own water bottle. If you’re worried about water quality on the go, get a bottle with a built-in filter, such as those available from President’s Choice, or if you’re looking for an insulated bottle perfect for stocking with ice, try these ones from Pure Hydration.

What’s your favourite low (eco) impact way to work out?

When it comes to saving water, I think we can use all the help we can get. Although I haven’t tried it for myself, I really like the concept behind this new “Dorsey Eco-Performance” water-saving kitchen faucet. Moen has built in three water-volume modes. When you just need to give something a rinse or a gentle soak, there are two lower-flow rate modes, including one with an aerated spray, that run at 6.6 litres per minute, but are designed to wash better than simply opening your tap part-way. But for those times when you need to fill a pot or blast some icky scrap of food off of a pan, there’s a high-volume mode at 8.3 litres per minute.

No doubt water-saving showerheads have saved Canadians loads of water from being wasted. It makes sense that the kitchen tap would be the next in line.

Choose well

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!

Let it rain

We’ve had some sunny, dry weather in the past few weeks and I’ve had to water our garden a few times, even though I’ve tried to train the plants to deal with dry spells (sorry, stunted tomatoes!) Over the rainy weekend, I found myself a bit obsessed with collecting water. My partner and I installed a rain barrel in our back yard last week, but we hadn’t had much rain to see how well it performs. Well, we got our wish — on Saturday it rained so hard that we could have filled several rain barrels. The overflow valve on the barrel shown here was spewing water for most of the afternoon, even after I filled up juice containers and other vessels I found by mining through our recycling bin.

The rain barrel sits on a wood bench that’s mounted into the edge of our deck, perfect for use with a watering can. We reworked the eavestrough a bit and added a new piece of downspout so it would sit on top of the rain barrel and direct water through the barrel’s screened top. Next time the barrel is empty I’ll have to put some spacers under it so the bench doesn’t rot!

We bought this 190 L barrel from Canadian Tire. I like this one because it has a flat back, so it can sit against a wall. I plan to put another one of these barrels in my front garden, positioned against the house. I bought a gravity-feed watering kit from Lee Valley to connect to that front-garden rain barrel so that when the soil dries out, I can just open the spigot and let gravity do the watering.

How do you water your garden?