The End of a Blog (for now)

Well, despite my good intentions, I haven't been able to keep up with the blog on any kind of regular basis since I started teaching. I have high hopes that as I get my classes under control, I'll be able to start up again, but for now I think it's more important that I focus on my lesson planning and on trying to keep in touch with some friends and family.

I'll still be living a green lifestyle (we walked to the grocery store today!) and I'll still be reading books looking for more ideas to incorporate. I may well post book reviews or cool ideas on here on a sporadic basis. If you'd like to keep up to date with any blog posts, I'd suggest subscribing using an RSS reader. I use Google Reader and I've found it to be very simple, and a great way to keep up with the blogs I read.

Food Waste Friday - on Sunday!

Sorry for the lateness of Food Waste Friday, it's been a busy weekend so far!



I'm not too disappointed in my waste this week. There's a bit of Chilean Dal, which might have still been ok, but frankly I've eaten a lot of it and it wasn't that great to start with. There's also some celery. We have a real problem using celery up before it goes bad. We do a bit better if we clean and chop it all at once, but even then we just end up with some cleaned and chopped celery going slimy in a pool of water.

I am going to be doing something to reduce waste tonight though. It's the start of the massive garbage nights in my area, when you can throw out as much and as large an item as you want to. Which means it's also time to see about a Landfill Rescue! I'll let you know if I find anything.

Green Birthday Presents

Yesterday was my birthday! Given that I now blog about being green, that could make gift-giving a little harder. Luckily my husband was up to the challenge. The most important part of being a green gift is that the recipient will actually use/want the gift. Frankly, that's fairly important for any successful gift. In my case, he went with a combination of practical and fun. For practical gifts, I needed a new pair of running shoes and I'd been putting it off for awhile (I don't really like shopping that much). So, since it was a birthday gift I had no choice but to go out and pick up a pair, and I'm glad that I have them now, my old ones were definitely used up!

My fun gift came from the liquor store. :) I'm a big fan of apple cider, and I've mostly always drunk Strongbow or Blackthorn. Both are imported from England, but they were the best choices available at the LCBO. However, it looks like cider is gaining in popularity, and the choices have expanded as well. Last month I discovered County Cider from Picton, ON and was very happy with the taste, and the fact that Picton is a lot closer than England. Proving that he pays attention, and that he reads my blog, my husband picked up four bottles. Another great thing about this cider is that it comes in refillable bottles, so there's never any waste. One's chilling in the fridge right now, getting ready for the weekend.

So, that's my advice for giving green gifts. 1. Make them useful gifts 2. Make them local products.

First Day of School!

This was my first day as a teacher and I'd like to have an ecological feel to my classroom(s). I've quickly realized that paper free is NOT possible in our school. The idea of doing a lot of work on the computers is great, but not when you have two computers and 27 students!

I think what I'm going to do to try and reduce paper usage is a) a lot of group work and b) a dedicated duotang for each student where they must place their papers as soon as they receive them. One thing I noticed in my practice teaching is that a class of 30 students can somehow go through 50 copies of the same handout! I'm hoping that by me keeping the duotangs at school for the most part, they'll stay organized and complete. It's horrible when you give a handout, and then find them all over the hallway! I'm also hoping that once the students know that there are no extra handouts, they'll be more careful of the ones they have. I figure the first time they have to copy a handout onto lined paper themselves will encourage them to keep their handouts!

I'd also like to find some articles/books that the students can read on their own that have an environmental theme. I'm sure I'll come up with a few more ideas as the year progresses, but if you have any, feel free to email me or leave a comment!

Food Waste Friday

Sigh. Another Friday, another day of food waste. This week I'm guilty of neglecting my produce.


The green pepper started liquefying when I picked it up, there's fuzzy green spots on the pears, and the apple is nasty. The only one I don't feel bad about is the apple...that batch was flavourless and mushy to start with, so I wasn't inspired to eat it. Unfortunately the green pepper and pears are victims of good intentions with no real plan. Since I hope to start menu planning this week, hopefully we'll be able to avoid that kind of waste next week!

You can check out the other participants in Food Waste Friday over at The Frugal Girl. I see a number of them had better weeks than I did!

Quality of Life...and Blog!

Now that I'm working as a teacher full time, I'm finding I don't have as much time in the evenings anymore, and I suspect it'll get worse when the students start next week! Since I'd like to avoid writing little posts without much value, I'm going to go from six posts a weeks on average, to three or four. Hopefully that will let me focus on my students, keep inspired for a green lifestyle, and still see my husband every once in a while!

One post that is definitely staying around will be the Food Waste Fridays. As a sneak peak, I can tell you that since I haven't been making a concerted effort with menu planning and food waste this week, it's going to show in the picture! I'm definitely going to need the accountability/embarrassment of the pictures to keep me on track.

Green Product: Glass Straws

I'm all about being green, but I'm not sure I'd go this far to eliminate my use of plastics. Introducing the GlassDharma, the green alternative to the plastic drinking straw. The idea of trading in plastic straws for a straw made of glass....is it really that much greener? Even though we'd be reducing by re-using a glass straw, the resources that go into making the glass straw, the specialized cleaning brush, and the protective case (hemp or bamboo) along with the fact that you have to clean the straw after every use.....you've got to remember that that all takes energy, even if it's not petroleum based.

I like to use a straw at least as much as the next person - some drinks just taste better through a straw, though I can never convince my husband of that fact! However, if I ever get concerned enough with the environmental impact of my straw usage, I think I'll just start cutting back instead of switching to a glass straw. :)

Rinse and Repeat

The first time I read a book which mentioned that my shampoo may not be all that green, I thought "I should look into that" and promptly forgot. Right now I'm reading another book (review to come) which has another large section on the impacts of shampoo on both the environment, and possibly on your body. This book talks a lot about the Precautionary Principle, which can be summarized as 'if you think it might have a bad impact, try not to do it'.

I don't have a favourite shampoo, but I pulled out the one currently in use, and here's the list of ingredients. I warn you now, there may be some spelling mistakes. I double checked, but most of those words aren't in my everyday vocabulary and spell check was no help at all!

• water: nothing scary about this ingredient.
  
• sodium lauryl sulfate: used to create lather, also in engine degreasers (higher concentration). May worsen some skin conditions, cause canker sores.
  
• ammonium laureth sulfate: listed as very harsh in terms of shampoo use
  
• sodium xylenesulfonate: a little disturbed when my search for this one took me too a pesticide database! Not a lot of information, but it's only slightly toxic.
  
• acrylates copolymer: this search brought up a water treatment chemicals page. Harmful to skin and eyes contact.
  
• sodium chloride: this is salt.
  
• laureth-4: also called dodecyl alcohol, ethoxylated. Very harmful to marine life, but only a mild skin irritant for us.
  
• dimethicone: makes hair shiny and slippery. Seems to have only moderate concerns for toxicity.
  
• citric acid: Also found in pop.
  
• butyrospermum parkii (shea butter) extract
• hydrolyzed algae extract
• cocamide mea
• fragrance: Although not guaranteed, fragrance often means phthalates, possible endocrine disruptor
  
• glycol disterate
• sodium benzoate
• polyquaternium-10
• disodium edta
• polyquaternium-6
• methylchloroisothiazolinone
• methylisothiazolinone
• red 33
• blue 1

Well, I was planning on looking up all the ingredients, but there were so many.... I think it's worth trying out some eco-friendly options. I might check out some of the local stores and do some online research. I think I can get used to the low-sudsing of shampoos without these chemicals, but it'll still have to prove itself good at cleaning hair! If anyone has suggestions...I'm all ears!

Meatless Meal - Chilean Dal

In an ongoing effort to decrease my environmental footprint, I've been experimenting with meatless meals. Meat uses up a lot more resources than vegetables/grains, so by decreasing my meat consumption I become more environmentally friendly!


The latest experiment is a Chilean Dal recipe that I found at The Simple Dollar. I give it maybe 2 stars out of 5. I made a few substitutions (I don't like cooked carrots, so I threw in some tofu and broccoli) and I just didn't have any cilantro. I found that the recipe made A LOT of food, even though Trent's version was already cut down from the version he first found. We had three adults for dinner, and I have enough for at least 3-4 more meals for myself (I doubt my husband will eat this). I have to admit I found the recipe to be disappointingly bland. The salt and pepper to taste help, but it needs something more. Hot sauce also helped. Maybe the addition of some curry paste, or a lot more onion and garlic. If I try this recipe again I'll try spicing it up a bit. I doubt I'll be cooking it anytime soon, I'm sure I can find other recipes that are more to my family's taste.

Trent’s Chilean Dal

1 cup of lentils
1 large red potato, chopped but unskinned
1 chopped carrot
2 chopped tomatoes
1/2 hot pepper, chopped
1/2 small onion chopped
1 clove garlic chopped
8 ounces tomato sauce (small can)
1/2 tsp cumin
1 tbsp beer or sherry
olive oil
1/8 cup chopped cilantro
salt and pepper

Night before:
1. Chop potato, carrot, tomatoes, pepper, onion, garlic, and cilantro.
2. Soak and cook lentils till soft. Drain and rinse, set aside.

Next day:
1. Sautee onions, garlic, hot pepper, and cumin in olive oil. Add beer or sherry.
2. Add vinegar, potatoes, and carrots, cover with water, bring to boil.
3. Add tomatoes and cook till potatoes are soft.
4. Add lentils and tomato sauce.
5. Salt and pepper to taste. Add more water or beer if it’s too dry, or add hot sauce if you like it spicier.
6. Throw in the cilantro, take if off the heat. Serve after a few minutes.

Food Waste Friday

For a while this week I thought I was going to be picture free. Then I started eating a couple of carrot sticks, got distracted, and left one out all night. After that I knew I'd have a picture of a carrot. But wait, there's more! While going through the fridge I found a container. Difficult to identify, but those fuzzy green things are in fact breadsticks. Obviously they've been around long enough that they would have qualified for an earlier Food Waste Friday. :) All in all, I'm not too disappointed, everything went into the compost instead of the garbage, and there wasn't that much even to go into the compost! Being publicly accountable for my waste, along with everyone else participating in Food Waste Friday with The Frugal Girl is really helping me stay conscious of our food, and inspiring me to use it up earlier. You can check out how the other participants did this week off the links at The Frugal Girl.

Exciting Times!

Sorry about no blog post yesterday, but things got exciting around here! I just finished teacher's college this past year, and had returned to work in industry since teaching jobs are hard to come by right now. Well, yesterday I was offered a full time teaching job! So I spent most of yesterday wandering around in a happy daze, and explaining to my current employer that even though I'd only been back for 2.5 weeks, I was going to be leaving again. They're being very good about it, letting me only work out a three day notice instead of the standard two weeks. Which is greatly appreciated since the principal of the school I'll be at would like me to be there on Monday to see the school and meet the teachers. School starts in just over a week, so I'd better get busy. :)

This morning I was taking care of signing my new contract, getting benefits, etc. And for the next couple of days I'll be pretty busy finishing up a couple of things at my current work, and transferring some project specific knowledge to the person who's taking over my project, so the posting is a little light. I did make a meatless meal, so I'll post about that on Saturday instead of my usual web round up. I'm hoping that Food Waste Friday will be a small post, but I can already think of one item I'll have to take a picture of this week. :(

A Small Step Back

Back in June I decided to give up pop, for environmental and health reasons. Since then I've noticed a lot more space in the recycling bins on garbage day, so it looks like it's been effective! Unfortunately, I fell off the wagon this week. For the past two days, I've had a gingerale with my meal. And the can is in the recycling.

I justified this decision since the pop was already in the house, I wasn't adding new waste. Definitely a rationalization. Which made me think that our environmental choices start well before the point of consumption. By creating rules for ourselves we can ensure that our environmental impact stays as low as we want it to go. This past weekend there was a GREAT sale on pop at a local store. I was tempted. I thought I could just pick up a few cases for when we had guests...just in case we needed them. I'm glad now that I remembered I'd given myself a rule about not buying any more pop! Without that rule I probably would have come home with 4-8 cases of pop, and I'm willing to bet that they wouldn't have stayed reserved for guests. Obviously I can't be trusted not to drink it myself if it's in the house. :)

The point here isn't that I'm not buying pop, and I'm not saying that you shouldn't buy pop. The point is that a while back I made a decision about the resources I wanted to consume, and came up with the arbitrary 'no buying pop' rule. And a couple of months later, when the novelty had worn off and there was a great deal to be had, that rule popped into my head at the right moment and made me really think about whether or not this purchase aligned with my values. So, take the effort out of making eco choices, and make up a couple rules that you'll live by (for the most part, unless you're having a party and really need some pop). So long as your rules don't kill your quality of life (like I will never buy anything that uses plastic), you'll be greener without having to think about being green.

PS: That's not to say I'll never ever buy pop again. If I'm having a party and know my guests would like pop, I probably will. But by only buying for a specific purpose, though I may pay more for the pop itself, I'll pay less in the long run, and use less resources since it won't get used up mindlessly.

One Small Step

I'm sure by now that everyone has seen some variant on the commercials that tell us to change one small item in our daily lives and we'll change the world. (If you haven't, you can check some out on YouTube here and here. ) I definitely believe that enough people making changes in their lives can have a profound impact on our resource usage. However, given the size of corporations, it makes sense that they can have an even greater immediate impact. Think about it, the building I work in is probably at least 80x larger than my house (with way more than 80x the computers!). I've switched to using a laptop at home, and it uses about 1/10th of the power of my old desktop. If the 3000 employees that work in the same building as me also switch to laptops that's a huge difference in energy consumption! If I raise my A/C by a degree, that has an impact. If my workplace raises the A/C by a degree, that's a much larger impact.

Now, corporations are not generally motivated by warm fuzzy feelings for the environment, with a few exceptions. There has to be a business reason to make changes to standard operating procedures, and it all boils down to money. The more money a business can make (or save), the more likely they are to implement a green change. And even with cost savings, it can take a while to change the status quo. Which is why I was surprised by something that happened while I was away at school. I've been back at work for two weeks now. Before I left, every two weeks a mail cart would come by and place a pay stub in the mail slot of all those 3000 employees. Most people would look at it and either shred it, or take it home to be disposed of later. I mean, who really wants to end up with 20 years worth of pay stubs hanging around? I admit that I was anticipating the pay stub cart when I received something even BETTER. An email pay stub! I'm not sure exactly when they made this change, but I'm happy to know that there is no more paper being used for pay stubs. Unless of course you're one of those people who prints out your emails to file them. If you are...stop now! Save the files on your computer and make regular backups, but stop printing emails!

Them having made this change makes me think I should look into those little flyers some of my bills send me, the ones that say I can receive my bills online and never get mail from them again. After all, if a corporation can go paperless (or more paperless), I ought to be able to make strides in that direction as well!

PS: As of yesterday, I'm 20% done my 1000 empties challenge!

Web Round Up

After a few weeks of not having many interesting articles to post, there's been a lot to read on the web this week!

No Impact Man is the blog of a guy who went for a year trying to make no impact on the earth. He also has a movie coming out soon. Today's article is an interesting look at how overwork can create blues, which may in turn lead to overconsumption.

Montreal now has a public bike sharing system. I'm not sure how it's going to work out, but it'll be interesting to watch the results.

When I cooked for the freezer, I mentioned that I'd like to try once a month cooking. Here's a Five Day Freeze plan for those who are having a hard time with once a month cooking (like me).

Despite not understanding Portugese, the ad campaign this post highlights is worth watching. Basically the argument is that if you pee in the shower, you can save the rainforest! The comments on this article are as interesting as the article.

I left the most controversial to the end...MacLean's magazine recently published The Case Against Having Kids. One of the reason's they mention is the environmental impact that more people have on the planet. There's actually a group taking this further, promoting the voluntary extinction of the human race. Not a group I'm planning on joining. This article promoted a lot of response in cyberspace, including a post called Children Are Worth Having. I wish that some of the responses had focused on the environmental impact of children....with used furniture/clothing and cloth diapering opportunities, the eco-impact doesn't have to be as severe as the first article implies. Maybe that's a post for another day!

Food Waste Friday

Though blogging about my food waste is making me more conscious, and making me try to use up food before it goes bad, sometimes that's just not enough.



Here we have a peach. I knew it was going bad, but I just couldn't bring myself to eat it, it wasn't a very flavourful peach. :( Though it's not in the picture, for the last couple of days I've been carting a pear back and forth to work - I just hadn't eaten it with my lunch. Inspired to avoid waste, I took it out for lunch today. Apparently I was too late to avoid waste....if you'd seen it you wouldn't have eaten it either.

On a related note, ever wonder how fruit flies show up as soon as fruit goes bad? I'd guarantee they weren't in the house, but once the peach went, they showed up! From this article I learned you should definitely pitch any fruit that's going, larvae can happen fast! I also learned that those little flies can live on just the fumes of alcohol. I still don't want them in my house, but you have to admit that's a pretty neat trick!

You can check out the other participants in Food Waste Friday over at The Frugal Girl.

Meatless Meal - 'Spaghetti'

Time for another meatless meal (so long as you use meat-free sauce)! This one is probably the easiest no-meat main dish you could make. I got the idea for The Biggest Loser cookbook which had a similar recipe (though they probably didn't put as much parmesan on their plate as I did on mine).

'Spaghetti'
Ingredients:
1 Spaghetti Squash
1 Jar pasta sauce, or homemade

First you need to cut the squash in half, lengthwise and hollow out the seeds. At this point the squash looks nothing like spaghetti, which made me worry I'd bought the wrong kind the first time. No worries! It'll look like spaghetti later.


Next, place each half cut side down on a cookie sheet. Cook in the oven for 30-45 minutes at 350 degrees, or until the squash is soft when you poke it with a fork. Make sure you're poking the inside of the squash, not the skin or you'll end up overcooking (I speak from experience here).

Take the squash out of the oven, use a fork to scrape the squash into a bowl. This is where it looks like spaghetti. It's also a bit watery so you may want to drain after scooping.

Place squash on plate, spoon some sauce over the squash and you have an acceptable substitute for spaghetti.


I served this with some fresh green beans and garlic bread, which were great complements to the squash. I enjoyed the meal, and so did my guests. In fact, one of them even asked me how I got the pasta to be so translucent! I can see this being made at my house again, though probably not very often since my husband believes squash were not meant to be eaten. I felt the same way, but this doesn't taste too much like squash, more like whatever sauce you use.

Rebates go Ungreen

A few months ago we purchased some computer equipment that came with a mail-in rebate. Being the frugal types that we are, we sent in the mail in rebate and waited for the cheque to come in. Now, you could argue that rebates themselves are un-green since they require you to mail in some paper, and then they mail you back some paper. You could definitely make an argument that it would be more eco-friendly for the manufacturer to just do something crazy, like lower the price of the product, and avoid the whole hassle of a rebate process. You'd be right! I'm sure manufacturers have many reasons to offer rebates. I'm equally sure that one of the reasons is that people buy the product and they forget or can't be bothered to send the rebate in. I can't really blame the manufacturer for that...they're letting people get some money back, but with a decent chance that they can keep some of the money after all. It's a good situation for them. And really...we're not using up that much of anything to mail in a piece of paper and get another piece of paper back. Paper comes from wood, and wood is renewable! They could be doing worse things.

Oh wait...they are doing worse things now! Instead of the expected cheques in the mail, we received a couple of rebate cards that look like Mastercards. Yep, plastic cards with a tiny amount of money on them that we must spend at a merchant. And not just any merchant, but one that will accept these rebate cards. Despite the fact that they look like Mastercards, not everyone will accept them (most will). So now instead of money in the bank that we can save up for something, we have two more cards to carry around waiting to be spent (didn't take us long actually...our grocery store accepts them). Why would a manufacturer do this? What happened to all the green hype about corporations wanting to be eco-friendly? How can sending us plastic cards, along with 2-3 pages of cardholder agreements be less expensive than sending a cheque? Maybe it has something to do with the diabolically small print on the back of one of the pages. The one that says that after 12 months there will be a $3.50 per month Account Maintenance Fee, a 3.00% per transaction International Transaction Fee and a $9.95 per incident Plastic Replacement Fee. So, if you get one of these anti-green rebate cards, make sure you use it up quickly. I'm not sure how to convince companies they should go back to the cheque method, but I'll be emailing our companies thanking them for the rebate, but expressing disappointment in the method of payment.

Thanks to Andres Rueda for posting the above picture on flickr and allowing its use.

Creeping DeCluttering

I really like having a clean house, but *really* hate cleaning. It's just overwhelming to try to clean the whole house at a time. Unfortunately, clutter seems to multiply itself. You throw the mail on the dining room table one day, and the next thing you know, you're back to this.

Luckily for my house and myself, An Exercise in Frugality recently posted about Decluttering a Drawer. I decided I'd start off with my dresser. Here it is before:


After about 15-20 minutes (I'm not a fast cleaner) it was looking like this:


Now, that's great for me and my dresser, but what does it have to do with being green? Mostly this helps reduce product usage. With a clean, organized space you're less likely to buy random junk and clutter up your area. You have a specific need, and know where you're going to store your purchases BEFORE you make the purchase. There's also the fact that when you know what you have, you're less likely to buy duplicates. For example, it turns out that there was an open package of Halls on my dresser. Buried. I didn't realize that, so I went and got another (I have a cold right now).

It turns out that decluttering can also multiply itself. I was happy with the way the dresser turned out, and the next thing I knew I was putting away the pile of clothes that always accumulates right beside the dresser (ok, it was a couple of days later). Next I think I'll tackle the pile of sewing repairs off in a corner, some of which have been there for an embarrassingly long time!

Is It Green?

I was heading to a party this past weekend and wanted to bring a gift that would be cool and green at the same time. After a bit of thought, I decided on a cut fruit basket...what could be greener than fruit, even if it does have to travel a little bit? I thought this way I'd avoid adding clutter and stuff to someone else's house. But was it really a green gift? When I picked it up, this is what I was given.



I was a bit disappointed in the amount of wrapping and packaging, but the cardboard is recyclable, and I understand that as a business, if you're sending someone home with cut fruit you'd like it to be covered in plastic.

Here's the basket ready to eat...looks pretty green, right?


Unfortunately, this company skewered all the fruit on plastic rather than wooden skewers. And they're stuck in some kind of florist's foam block to keep them standing upright. However, the fruit tasted great, the basket looked great, and with a few small changes I think this could be a really green gift. To make these baskets at home I think all you'd need would be: fruit, melon baller, funky cookie cutter.

Option 1:
Cut the fruit into cool shapes, stick them on a wooden skewer (renewable resource) and use the same kind of foam block and basket as above. Green savings: plastic wrap, cardboard box, plastic skewers. AND the foam and basket are reusable if you're making them for your own party.

Option 2:
This one came to me as I was writing the article, trying to get rid of the foam and basket. At first I thought of just putting the skewers in a vase, but realized the skewers would probably fall in, especially as their numbers dwindles as people ate the fruit. Then I realized you could stick the skewers in some RICE KRISPIE SQUARES! Since you can shape Rice Krispie squares into about any shape you'd like, you could create any number of funky shapes for your skewers. I'd probably start off with just a big rectangle and make a garden of fruit flowers. Green Savings: plastic wrap, cardboard box, plastic skewers, foam block, basket. The only thing that wouldn't be edible would be the wooden skewers, and they're a renewable resource. I can see myself using this option the next time I have a party! :) Extra bonus: no danger of collecting a lot of different baskets in your basement.

UPDATE: I've been told that what I thought was foam was in fact a head of lettuce holding the skewers upright. I love that!

Web Round Up - Comics!

I haven't done a lot of reading on the web this week, but there were a couple of cute comics that were kind of environmental today. I like to keep up with a few comics on http://comics.com. :)





I also found a listing of "The Best Green Blogs" from Canada that I'd like to check out.