February 14, 2008
You have until February 17th to add your support to proposed provincial pesticide banning legislation.
For more information on the dangers of pesticides, the campaign to ban pesticides and the proposed Queen’s Park legislation see: Pesticide Free Ontario.
To send your comments on the legislation go to this government link.
February 5, 2008
My general policy is to buy clothes that can be washed in a regular washing machine with cold water and biodegradable detergent. I include in that category many clothes that are labeled “dry-clean only”. In particular most wool, synthetic or mixed-fibre fabrics can survive a cold water wash on the delicate cycle in a front-loading machine. That said, I have destroyed a couple of items that way, so experiment at your own risk.
The big problem with dry-cleaners is the solvents, perchloroethylene (perc) in particular. Perc is a solvent known to be acutely toxic to wildlife (particularly of the aquatic variety), and which is classified as a possible carcinogen in humans. Perc is what makes dry-cleaned clothes smell like dry-cleaned clothes.
Fortunately a very very very few cleaners offer something called “wet cleaning” or “solvent free cleaning.” These processes use soaps and bleaches instead of solvents. However, the processes are not perfect, and the soaps and bleaches may not be as biodegradable as claimed. However, solvent-free is about as good as it gets for those delicates that cannot stand up to washing machines or bathroom sinks.
The family owned and operated Modern Dry Cleaners in Ottawa offers customers solvent-free cleaning. However, they don’t offer the service, you have to know to ask for it, and it will cost you an extra $3.00 per item. That said, they’ve done a consistently excellent job cleaning the items I’ve brought to them. Plus these wet-cleaned clothes come home smelling like nothing, which is exactly what I like my clothes to smell like.
Modern Dry Cleaners, 571 Bronson Avenue, Ottawa, ON, K1R 6K2, (613) 235-1497
January 28, 2008
Kudos to the Ottawa Sun for running an article on environmentally-friendly flooring on Saturday (January 28). However, the article was hardly a local-to-Ottawa one. The bamboo flooring distributor they list, Silk Road Flooring, operates out of Toronto, and the eCommerce site provided for cork flooring, Fast Floors, is a US company. So let me fill in some of the Ottawa details that the Ottawa Sun left out.
My first stop for any green renovation project is The Healthiest Home and Building Supplies in Ottawa West. In terms of green flooring, they offer the following choices:
The Healthiest Home and Building Supplies, 135 Holland Avenue (right behind The Table, vegetarian restaurant), Ottawa, ON, 613.715.9014, info@thehealthiesthome.com
January 16, 2008
I never would have thought of doing it, but there was that day before Christmas when it snowed quite a bit and all of downtown was gridlocked and I was facing the very real possibility of sitting on a bus for several hours, so I got off the bus and started walking. That day it took me almost 2 hours to slog home through the snow, but I didn’t mind. I was still moving faster than the cars. That day of gridlock, I learned it was possible to put one foot in front of the other and get home under my own power.
Today I chose to walk home. The days are getting longer and I can already feel the tug to be outside. I’m one cubicle over from the cubicles with a window. When I stand up I can see whether the sun is shining or not. Today it shone all day. Somehow, when I left at 4 pm my feet took me in the opposite direction from the bus stop, and they kept going. 1 hour and 20 minutes later I was unlocking my front door.
I feel great, much more energised than I usually do after sitting on a bus for 40 minutes (and with traffic these days I’m often stuck on a bus for longer than that). Google maps tells me that it is 7.5 km from my office building to my house. So now I know that 7.5 km is a completely doable walk. Yes, it took me twice as long as usual to get home, but I got exercise and fresh air on the way. If I’d hurried home I would have had to spend 40 minutes doing some sort of exercise inside. So really I didn’t lose any time at all. I think I’m going to make this a weekly habit.
December 9, 2007
Sometime in childhood I figured out that a tree had to be cut down in order to become a Christmas tree and I was devastated. I begged my parents to stop killing living trees and get a plastic one instead.
When I set up my own household with my partner ten years ago, I finally got my wish. We bought a small plastic tree. But it never looked nearly as good as the real ones my parents brought into their house. It was just too plastic, so it got Full-circled a couple of years back.
Now I’m glad I got rid of it, though I feel bad that I passed it on to someone else. You see, in researching this post I found out that plastic trees are worse than kitsch, they’re actually toxic. Grist, which is a great source for environmental news and information, explains that fake Christmas trees are made from that environmental villain polyvinyl chloride (PVC), which is sometimes stabilised with lead. I probably don’t need to tell readers of this blog that both PVC and lead are damaging to human health as well as the environment. This ends the debate for me. Fake Christmas trees are clearly not an environmental choice.
About 8 years ago we bought a reusable living Christmas tree: a 2-foot tall potted Norfolk pine. Norfolk pine will not survive Ottawa winters so there was never the option of planting it. Instead we had to adopt it. The tree lives with us in the house year-round. It is fed a daily diet of left-over dog water and has grown to a happy healthy 7-feet in height and shows no sign of stopping. (As an aside, let me mention that our ceilings are only 8-feet high, so I’m not quite sure what will happen in a year or two when the tree meets the ceiling.)
If living year-round with an indoor tree is not in your Christmas plans a cut tree is probably your best environmental bet. There is some merit to arguments made that Christmas tree farms provide some habitat for wildlife and are one of the least resource intensive forms of conventional farming. However, as with any shopping decision ask questions. Is the tree from a small local family-farm or has it been trucked in from some giant corporate tree farm? What land-stewardship practices do they use? Do they use pesticides or chemical fertilizers? Do they encourage wildlife to make use of their farm while the trees are growing?
Going to a cut-your-own tree farm can answer a lot of these questions while giving you and your family a fun excursion out. Plus, at a cut-your-own place only the sold trees are cut down. It is a sad sight to see all the leftover cut trees lying dead and abandoned at the local Loblaws on Christmas day.
In Ottawa, cut Christmas trees are collected by the City after Christmas. Some of these are given a new life as wind-breaks on the Canal. Others go to be chipped for mulch which is used to control weeds and to reduce the amount of water needed on City gardens and urban trees. You can also put your tree outside in your yard for the rest of winter to provide shelter for birds and then put it out for the Spring yard-waste collections.
To find a local Christmas-tree grower check out the Christmas Tree Farmers of Ontario website: www.christmastrees.on.ca They list 16 local farms in the Ottawa area (all of which appear to be family-owned) where you can go to cut your own tree.
