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April 14, 2008

Earth Day Season Events in Ottawa, 2008

Posted by greenlivingottawa under Ottawa, energy, food, household, organic, recycled, waste reduction
[3] Comments 

A few people have sent me press releases about Earth Day events in Ottawa and I promised to pass the information along, so here goes:

  • April 18 and 19 at 7:30 pm, Dancing the Earth for Earthday, the premiere of the Buddha and the Tree of Life, a dance performance by Anjali at Arts Court.
  • April 19, 10 am to 4 pm, The EcoStewardship Fair at the R.A. Centre. I’m a regular at these fairs, which provides a venue for eco-conscious consumers to find eco-conscious products and for eco-conscious citizens to find eco-conscious groups to support and join.
  • April 19, 10:30am Our Land Our Future, preschool Earth Day activities at Centennial Branch of the Library.
  • April 22, 7 pm, Global Warming, the Swedish Experience, a talk by the Ambassador of Sweden to Canada, Ingrid Iremark, at the Main Branch of the Public Library, 120 Metcalfe Street. Admission is free.
  • April 29, 11:45 am - 2:15 pm, The Six Sins of Greenwashing, The Hampton Inn, 11:45-2:15, presented by Scott McDougall, President and CEO of Terrachoice and the Canadian Marketing Association.
  • May 3, 8:30 to noon, the Sunoco Earth Day Tree Planting as part of the Riverside South Reforestation Project: the goal is to plant 2,000 trees that morning.
  • May 3, 8:30 am to noon, pancake breakfast followed by another tree planting at the Kilborn Greenspace in Alta Vista, between Featherstone and Prospect.
  • May 8, 11 am to 1 pm, EarthCARE Expo, on education and the environment, at Confederation High School.
  • Also, HGTV is having three days of Green television programming on April 19, 20 from 1 pm to 5 pm and on April 22 from 8 pm til midnight.

    If any of you know of any other Ottawa Earth Day events please post the information in a comment. (BTW, I have to manually approve comments because of all the spam this site gets, so please be patient if your comment does not show up right away).

     

    March 13, 2008

    GreenBags versus Green-washing

    Posted by greenlivingottawa under climate change, energy, food, household, recycled, waste reduction
    [5] Comments 

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    I’ve noticed a lot of local merchants using “biodegradable” bags lately. In fact I’ve even blogged positively about the phenomenon. However, a recent piece of news has led me to rethink the “greenness” of these biodegradable forms of packaging.

    Worldwide there is a shortage of grains, causing the price of basic foodstuffs to skyrocket.  While vulnerable people in the worst off parts of the world are starving, we in the rich North have taken to making disposable bags out of food, namely out of corn, to assuage our environmental guilt. While these biodegradable products do go some way towards solving some of our waste problems here, isn’t making disposable products out of corn pretty much the same as throwing out food?

    The downside of these biodegradable packaging solutions has been generally ignored. However, the so-called green-promise of biofuels (also largely made out of corn) has recently come under criticism from a number of sources: eg. UK Chief Scientific Advisor, and Greenpeace, Oxfam, Friends of the Earth, WWF. According to a UBC geographer, the use of pesticides and fertilizers (mostly manufactured out of oil) to grow corn to make ethanol and biodiesel will increase the extent of the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico (a “dead zone” is exactly what it sounds like). Meanwhile, development groups have criticized the use of food-growing land to serve the overdeveloped world’s hunger for driving their cars. The Economist puts it starkly: filling an SUV’s tank just once uses as much maize as is required to feed a person for a year.

    The simple truth is our lifestyles are unsustainable. We can’t just exchange one product for another, we have to actually reduce our consumption. In terms of shopping bags, there is a very simple solution. Use a reusable totebag, preferably one made out of something that would otherwise be filling up a landfill somewhere. I’ve already blogged about Loblaws’ nifty recycled bags. Today, I want to blog about my favourite reusable bag: the Velcro GreenBag.

    The reason I like the Velcro GreenBag so much is its design. It is easy to keep in a coat pocket or purse because it packs up into a small flat pouch that velcros shut. When it is expanded to its full size, it can carry the equivalent of 2 to 3 plastic grocery bags worth of heavy stuff. Unfortunately it is not made of recycled materials. It is, however, recyclable. I’ve had mine now for nearly year and there is no sign of wear or tear and I do bring them with me always.  By the time my GreenBags are ready to be recycled, I hope GreenBag has managed to work out how to make a replacement out of recycled materials.

    In Ottawa you can buy GreenBags at the WheatBerry. Online they are available through www.ecobags.com.

    The Wheatberry, 206 Main Street,Ottawa, ON K1S 1C6,(613) 235-7580

    If you’d like to let the world community know that you think we should feed people not cars you can sign onto a global petition at Avaaz.org.

     

    March 8, 2008

    Coming Home to Organic Fruits and Veggies

    Posted by greenlivingottawa under Ottawa, food, household, waste reduction
    [7] Comments 

    As was recently pointed out in a comment, I have not been keeping up on my posts lately. My apologies, but these days all I want to do when I get home after an hour and a half to two hour bus-through-snow commute is flake out on the sofa.

    However, this weekend I’ve decided not to try to do anything outside of the house, but just to sit tight and weather out this latest storm, so I have time to post. I don’t even have to go grocery shopping because while I was at work yesterday afternoon, Ottawa Organics stopped by my house and filled the cooler I keep on the front porch with fresh organic fruit and vegetables, warm-from-the-oven bread, and milk in a glass bottle.

    Ottawa Organics and Natural Foods is a local company that started up in June of 2007.  They offer local and imported organically grown fruits and vegetables through a food box program or a la carte.  They also sell dairy products, local grains and flours, locally-roasted coffee, chocolate bars, locally produced condiments, and baked goods from two bakeries: Art-Is-In and Bread and Sons.

    Ottawa Organics makes an effort to offer a wide variety of produce in their box and to change what is included from week to week.  We find the medium-sized food box is perfect for a couple.  They also offer small and large boxes, or you can just pick from a list of fruits and veggies.  Everything we have ordered from them has been high quality.  I have also been impressed by the minimal packaging they use.

    While they do try to source as much as possible locally, at the end of a long winter such as we are having this year, most produce comes from elsewhere.  For a carless couple with busy lives, the best part Ottawa Organics is that for a minimum order of $25 they deliver to our door.  Orders have to be placed on-line by Tuesday evening for Thursday or Friday delivery.

    Ottawa Organics and Natural Foods, 333 Catherine St #215, Ottawa, (613) 234-1515, matt@ottawaorganics.com

     

    December 16, 2007

    Day Five: Giving the Gift of Not Having to Cook

    Posted by greenlivingottawa under 100-mile, Ottawa, food, organic, recycled, reduce, waste reduction
    No Comments 

    This year my mother has put “a catering gift certificate” on her Christmas wish-list.  Good food speaks to the body and soul and having meals cooked for you can be a great treat. If you’ve got more time than money, a gift certificate for a simple wholesome meal cooked by you can be a great eco-friendly thingless gift to give. However, if you’ve got more money than time and you want to give the gift of a meal cooked by a professional chef, there are a couple of caterers in Ottawa that are particularly eco-friendly and worth mentioning here.

    First, if the person is lucky enough to live or work in the Kitchissippi Ward of Ottawa (basically the near west-end) you could buy him or her a week or two (or more) of eco-friendly catered lunches from Credible Edibles. Judy Varga-Toth of Credible Edibles cooks healthy nutritious weekday lunches using as many organic and locally-grown ingredients as possible and then delivers them to her customers in reusable lunch boxes. As she writes on her web-site: “No one should have to choose convenience at the expense of a healthy body and mind or a healthy planet.”

    Jennifer and Jo-Ann of The Red Apron run a “dinner club.” They cook and deliver healthy suppers to their customers on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Jennifer and Jo-Ann try to source their ingredients locally and buy organic when they can. Their meals are delivered in special cardboard containers that are 100% recyclable. They currently run their business out of Old Ottawa South, though they will soon be moving to a new location in Centre-town.  Recently, my husband and I decided to buy ourselves three weeks of the Red Apron Dinner Club as our wedding anniversary present to ourselves.  We were not disappointed.

    Judy, Jennifer and Jo-Ann are all members of Slow Food Ottawa-Gatineau, a non-profit group that seeks to promote good, clean and fair food in the Ottawa area.

     

    November 4, 2007

    Local Eco-Shopping: Soul Matters

    Posted by greenlivingottawa under Ottawa, arts and culture, clothing, fair trade, food, organic
    [7] Comments 

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    A new store has opened up on Bank Street near Sunnyside in Old Ottawa South: Soul Matters. I had a few minutes to spare so I dropped in to see what they had to offer to the environmentally-conscious consumer.

    They have an eclectic mix of books, tapes, dvds, yoga clothes, tea and spiritual accessories (for lack of a better term). They carry a wide variety of caffeine-based and herbal Numi teas, one of my favourite organic and fairtrade tea companies. They also carry Respecterre bamboo yoga clothes, which are designed and made in Canada.

    Bamboo is not only easier on the earth to produce than most other clothing fibres but also is reputed to be anti-bacterial, which is always handy in workout wear. Soul Matters also carries gift bags made out of bamboo paper (in case you need anti-microbial gift-bags, just kidding).

    Soul Matters, 1093 Bank St. Ottawa 613-730-SOUL (7685)

     

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