Vandalism is NOT Green

Today I was hiking along the Bruce Trail - a fairly green hobby. We were doing 19 km today, so we dropped a car off at one end of the trail, and we all drive back to the beginning of the trail in the other car. That way, once we're finished hiking we can hop in the car we left, pick up the other car, and get on with our evening. Normally this works really well. Today, after a long day of hiking we got back to the car left at the end of the trail; today that was my car. As we neared the end of the trail I spotted my car and got all excited....there's nothing like seeing your car at the end of a long day of hiking...the end is literally in sight! As we switched out of our hiking boots and got ready to drive back to the other car, this is what greeted us on the passenger side.


Yes, as we innocently left our car in the designated parking area, on a busy road, at an intersection with a busy rail trail, someone decided to take a rock and smash it through my front passenger window. Which really sucks to come back to. They opened the glove box, and moved my hair band from a cup holder. That's it - except for the broken window of course. Frankly, I have no idea why they bothered breaking the window...it would have been pretty obvious from looking inside that there was nothing of value. And I do mean nothing...probably the map book was the most expensive thing in the car. However, I'm EXTREMELY grateful that this didn't happen yesterday when my in-laws car was parked there...with all their clothing, and my laptop bag.

So, the only thing I need to replace is one window. In terms of being eco-friendly, obviously it would have been better to keep using my original window. Since that's no longer an option, grr...still kind of mad at the person(s) who broke my window, we're going to go the next most eco-friendly route. Instead of buying a new window, we're checking at the auto wreckers to see if we can pick up a used window and my husband will either install it himself or we'll bring it to the mechanic's. So now, I'm going to continue trying to get ahold of my insurance to see if I'm covered at all, and wait for the police to come see my car for the official report. But I'm still feeling pretty cheerful, and the owner of the B&B we're at has actually just told me that he put some clear plastic up on my car window in case it rains. It's nice dealing with small business owners instead of giant corporations!

Buy Local vs Buy Organic

There's been a huge increase in the buy organic movement in the last few years. Even my local discount grocery store has a fairly comprehensive organics section. Everyone has different reasons for buying organic, but the most common are health (decrease the amount of chemicals consumed) and the environment (eliminate the chemicals used in the production process).

The other major green purchasing movement is to buy local. When buying local, you're not as concerned with organics, you're looking to minimize the distance your goods travel to get to your plate or house. Farmer's markets and craft shows are good sources for local food and goods. It's often difficult to tell where something has been manufactured if you're buying from a larger chain store.

So....buy local or buy organic? I think that to get the most eco-bang for my buck, I'd like to try buying more local goods. I think that the resources used to transport goods between continents (and sometimes to transport the raw materials away and the finished goods back) has a larger impact on the environment than the difference between organic and non-organic products. Ideally, you can get local and organic.

When I was at the farmer's market a couple of weeks ago I picked up the card of a local beef farmer. Another benefit of buying local is that you can talk to the actual farmer or manufacturer. For example, this farmer isn't certified organic (that's pricey and takes a long time) but when you talk to him, you find out that his cows are hormone and antibiotic free and fed on all natural feed. I'd like to try buying a quarter of beef and have that last us through the year. We'll have the satisfaction of knowing that our beef has only traveled about 40 km to get to us, and as an added benefit, it should be less expensive that if we were buying certified organic meat. In order to take advantage of this local beef offer, we need a deep freezer (already have one) and we need space in the deep freezer - I'm betting a quarter of a cow takes up some space! Over the next couple of months I'm going to make a real effort to organize our deep freeze and use up some items to make space for the beef. It's probably a good idea to organize the deep freezer anyways....less chance of something ending up in a Food Waste Friday photo is I can keep track of what's in there.

Food Waste Friday

No picture, and no food waste this week! My first no-waste week (hopefully of many!). The post is a day late again this week because we were having such fun on vacation we decided to stay an extra day. We actually almost had a No Food week. About an hour outside of town I realized I'd forgotten to pack the hamburgers and hotdogs that were supposed to be some of our dinners. After we got there, and were talking about the planned steak dinner, DH asked where the steak was...turns out I'd forgotten to pack it as well! Good thing we caught some fish, and there was a grocery store not too far away.