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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).

     

    April 12, 2008

    Convenient Computer Recycling in Ottawa

    Posted by greenlivingottawa under Ottawa, household, recycled, waste reduction
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    Today I dropped by Heartwood House to drop off my old computer bits and pieces, all those obsolete electronics that have been cluttering up the house. Heartwood House, which is conveniently located in downtown Ottawa at Rideau and Chapel, is home to the Everybody Wins Computer Recycling Program.

    The Everybody Wins program accepts all types of computer hardware: towers, drives, mice, cables, keyboards, monitors, printers, speakers, disc-burners, even CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs. Heartwood House ask for a donation of $2 each time you donate, to cover their administrative expenses. They also charge a $20 fee for each old-style CRT (cathode ray tube) monitors because of the special processing they require due to the lead and other hazardous chemicals they contain. (By weight, CRT monitors are composed of a shocking 25% lead). On the other hand, for each tower you bring in that is 6 years old or younger, they will give you a tax receipt for $15-$25.

    The actual electronics recycling is done by the local company RDLong Computers who have made it their mission to divert as much end-of-life electronics from landfill sites to alternative re-use and re-cycle streams as possible. Heartwood House, home to 16 charities, receives a portion of the recycling proceeds RDLong generates. RDLong also donates some of the salvaged, still usable computers to The Anti-Poverty Project, a local charity that provides computer systems, software and education services to groups around the National Capital Region that work with low-income individuals providing internet access and opportunities to improve computer skills and employability.

    Everybody Wins Computer Recycling Program, Heartwood House, 153 Chapel Street, 613-323-178

    Hours September to June: Monday - Thursday: 8:00am to 7:00pm, Friday: 8:00am to 4:00pm

    Hours June to August: Monday - Tuesday - Thursday: 8:00am to 5:00pm, Wednesday: 8:00am to 7:00pm, Friday: 8:00am to 4:30pm

     

    March 13, 2008

    GreenBags versus Green-washing

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

    greenbag.jpg

    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.

     

    January 28, 2008

    Green Flooring in Ottawa

    Posted by greenlivingottawa under Ottawa, building, health, household, recycled, waste reduction
    [3] Comments 

    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:

    • ECO-logo certified bamboo.  (Note, some other brands of bamboo flooring are finished with formaldehyde resins that give off a lot of VOCs.)
    • Carpeting that has no heavy metals, PVC, or formaldehyde in it and that is made from partly recycled contents in low-impact manufacturing facilities.
    • Cork with no formaldehyde, organic solvents, or VOCs
    •  ”Orchard-salvaged” wood flooring
    • Marmoleum, an environmentally-friendly healthy alternative to linoleum
    • Reclaimed wood flooring

    The Healthiest  Home and Building Supplies, 135 Holland Avenue (right behind The Table, vegetarian restaurant), Ottawa, ON, 613.715.9014, info@thehealthiesthome.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
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    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.

     

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