Creatively United for the Planet's 3rd Annual Festival - Saturday April 26th

Creatively United for the Planet is exactly what it sounds like, communities and individuals united together in creative ways to promote taking care of our planet. “We focus on education and awareness,” states founder Frances Litman. “We want to create a positive atmosphere and attitude towards approaching a difficult/negative subject [like the current state of the environment].”

Recently in June 2013, they created Vancouver Island Green Scene, another non-profit that specifically focuses on “building, enhancing and supporting a values-based green economy” which “promotes sustainable choices and responsible practices.” Members range from individuals and businesses to local agriculture and the regional government. As the list grows, Frances hopes that it can be used as a resource not just for members, but also the local community.

As a non-profit organization, their projects mostly involve bringing people together to share ideas and talk. A local company in Victoria has helped them create a community blog where anyone can share ideas, articles, stories, and anything that interests them or might interest others. This new program is called TicTalking and is an innovative new way to use technology to gather people together. Say goodbye to the old staple covered bulletin board at the community centre and instead just log on to TicTalk for all the latest in your community.

Founded in 2010, the society has hosted two community festivals, which last year drew over 5,000 Victoria residents. Amazingly, in spite of having over 5,000 attendees, the festival only had 4.5 bags of garbage! Everything else was either composted or recycled.

This year they are proud to present this year’s third annual Creatively United for the Planet Festival 2014 on Saturday April 26^th, which will coincide with the 33^rd annual Earth Walk parade. Gather together at Centennial Square at noon because the walk takes off at 12:30pm sharp to bring everyone to St Ann’s Academy, the festival hosts. With tons of food, arts and crafts, dancing and other events, the festival will be a great day out for people of all ages.

If you enjoyed our interview article on Level Ground Trading, co-founder Stacey Toews will be joining Deebee’s Organic Tea Pops founder Dionne Laslo-Baker in an educational talk. I had the great fortune of trying Dionne’s Tea Pop’s at a trade show last weekend and was incredibly impressed.

Stacey and Dionne will be sharing their experience and ideas on how everyone can integrate healthy eating, living, and being into their business. From how employees interact with each other, to product quality, relationships with suppliers, keeping your business environmentally healthy, and reinvesting profits back into the community.  The talk will be in St. Ann’s auditorium on Saturday April 26^th and goes from Noon until 1:30pm. It is a ticketed event (only $12 pre-sale, $25 at the door) and all proceeds go straight back into the society for planning their next event.

Another light hearted and fun family event will be the screening of “The Clean Bin Project,” a film where partners Grant and Jen go head to head to see which of them can “swear off consumerism and produce the least garbage in one year.” The film has won over six different awards since its release, including Best Canadian Documentary Projecting Change in 2011. It has been described as “An Inconvenient Truth meets Super Size Me.” It is also a ticked event $12 pre-sale and $20 at the door.

We hope to see you there!

Green New Year's Resolutions

There's something about the changing of the year that inspires us to want to start fresh. This year, instead of resolving to go to the gym or floss every single day, maybe you'll want to make an environmentally conscious resolution or two. If you already recycle, use cloth bags, and a reusable water bottle, here are a few other simple ideas:

Wash in cold: Only about 10% of the energy used by a typical washing machine powers the motor, while the other 90% of the energy is used to heat the water. Most clothes will come clean in cold water, so consider switching your washing machine's temperature setting to cut down on energy use (and energy cost). For heavily soiled clothing, try warm water instead of hot.

Dry minimally: After the refrigerator, the clothes dryer is the second biggest household energy user. When using the dryer, clear the lint filter after each load for maximum efficiency (and to prevent a fire hazard). Dry only full loads of clothes. Dry heavy fabrics separately from lighter ones and turn off the machine as soon as the clothes are dry. Don't add wet clothing in the middle of the drying cycle. Of course, hanging clothing outside in the sun and air to dry is the most energy-efficient method in the summer, and using a folding indoor rack all year long is great if you can find the space.

Fix the leaks: Of course, we all know a dripping tap can waste a surprising amount of water (one source says 20000 litres a year), but did you know that one in every five toilets leak? The leaks are usually silent, but can waste anywhere between 30 and 500 gallons of water every day. To see if your toilet is leaking, put a few drops of food colouring in the toilet tank. If the dye shows up in the toilet bowl after 15 minutes or so, the toilet has a leak. Leaking is usually caused by an old or poorly fitting flapper valve, which is easy to fix. Test and fix all your household's toilets, and your New Year's resolution for 2012 can be done in one afternoon!

Clean the fridge: The refrigerator is the most power-hungry appliance in most homes, accounting for up to 15% of your energy bill. To help it run its best, clean the condenser coil at the back of your fridge twice a year. Condenser coils tend to get dusty, making them less efficient.

Wash smart: Running a fully loaded dishwasher without prerinsing the dishes can use a third less water than washing the dishes by hand. Just scrape the food off and then let the dishwasher handle the rest. Use the air-dry setting (instead of heat-dry) to consume half the electricity.

A Greener Holiday Season

From using LED Christmas lights on timers to using recycled wrapping paper, so many of us are looking for ways to make the holiday season less wasteful and more environmentally friendly.

The City of Vancouver has been promoting its Create Memories, Not Garbage campaign on public transportation. Here are a few of their tips for more environmentally-friendly gifting:

Give experiences

A gift for busy parents? Dinner out; many restaurants offer gift certificates or they'll let you prepay the meal. Or maybe even better, offer up some babysitting too.

Take advantage of our local mountains. Ski, snowboard, take lessons, ice skate, hike, or go for the view and a hot chocolate.

Most people get haircuts, you can send them to their usual place while you pick up the bill, or send them to the new place down the street.

Everyone likes a rainy night at the movies. Get passes at any neighbourhood theatre.

Gifts that last

Parents spend a lot of time sorting out toys, picking up broken bits and hiding choking hazards. Choose simple toys that can be passed along. What was your favourite when you were eight years old?

Kites were popular in China thousands of years ago, as were stone yo-yos in Greece. Why do some toys last? They are creative, hands on and everyone can use them. Crayons, scrabble and blocks don't end up in the landfill.

How do you know something will really last? When it already has. Pass on a family heirloom, or something you cherish that someone else has admired.

Places to shop

Gifts that have not travelled far tend to have less packaging and be made of simpler materials; therefore they have less impact on the environment. While they may require a little more time to find, the shopping journey itself can be enjoyable especially if you combine it with a visit to a new neighbourhood; bring your mug and take five with a hot drink.

Visit local craft fairs and find durable, handmade gifts. Look in your community newspaper or search the internet for 'local craft fairs'.

See Metro Vancouver's Christmas pages for more tips for gifts and suggestions for greener decorating and eating this holiday season. There are many similar pages to give you even more ideas (for example, Coquitlam, the WWF blog, and My Zero Waste).

Diapers and Other Baby Items

I'll be the first to admit that I don't know much about babies. Everything I've learned has been from watching my nephew, who just turned two years old in July, and talking to my sister. One thing I've noticed is that parents all have very different preferences when it comes to things like diapers. There are so many different options just in disposal diapers, including compostable ones, chlorine-free ones, and diaper “systems” that have reusable and disposable components. Add in all the different brand names, and I wouldn't even know where to start figuring out what to stock. However, I can special order a wide variety of diapers by the case. Most cases of diapers are only 4 packages, so there's a good chance you'll use them up before the baby outgrows them, and they won't require huge amounts of storage space.

If you are interested in buying diapers, just give us a call or email for a price quote. Here are some of the brands we can order through our suppliers: Nature Babycare Eco-Diapers (diapers sizes 1-6 and training pants sizes 4-6), Seventh Generation (sizes 1-6), Broody Chick Chlorine-free Compostable (newborn, infant, toddler, and junior), Earth's Best Tendercare Chlorine-Free Disposable (sizes 1-5), Mama Zone Eco-Responsible Compostable (stages 1-4), and the GDiaper System (reusable gPants in small, medium, and large, plus gCloth inserts and flushable refills in small and medium/large).

We can also special order baby wipes, including biodegradable ones, compostable ones, unscented ones, and ones made of organic cotton, but they often come in cases of 12 or more units in a case. If you would be interested in buying less than a full case, please let us know and if there's enough interest, we can bring wipes into regular stock.

We do have a few baby-orientated things already in stock. The most obvious items are in the Baby Foods section of our website and include jarred baby food, arrowroot cookies, and Stonyfield's YoBaby Yogurt. We also carry an unsweetened, full-fat yogurt that's very popular with babies: Greek Gods Traditional Plain Yogurt. My nephew loves that stuff plain or with some fruit stirred in.

If there's an organic food item or an eco-friendly household product you would like to be able to buy from us, please give us a call at 604-708-2345 or email info@greenearthorganics.com. We will try to bring it into stock or try to special order it for you.

Happy organic living and eating!

The Reusable Bag, For Better or Worse

A draft report by the Environment Agency in the UK is fueling the bag debate... again.

I go a few trade shows every year - some for work and some just for fun - so I've acquired a collection of reusable bags that were free giveaways. I have fabric ones (nylon, cotton, and canvas), plastic ones and ones made out of recycled materials. I actually try not to get any new ones now, but sometimes the program guide or sample comes in one, so my collection grows despite my best intentions. I purge them by giving them to friends who swear that they will use them.

Using a reusable bag can be an good environmental choice. If it is used multiple times - at least once a week - four or five reusable bags can replace 520 plastic bags a year, according to Nick Sterling, the research director at Natural Capitalism Solutions, a nonprofit focused on corporate sustainability issues.

But I've come to realize that a reusable bag that is never reused is just more waste and clutter. One popular type of reusable bag is made of nonwoven polypropylene, which requires the same amount of energy to produce as an estimated 28 traditional plastic shopping bags or eight paper bags. In addition, their additional weight increases the fuel required to ship them, and if thrown away, they will take even longer to breakdown because of their thickness. Cotton or canvas options aren't perfect either, as they can require large amounts of water and energy to produce and may contain harsh chemical dyes. Paper bags, though recyclable, require the destruction of millions of trees and are made in factories that contribute to air and water pollution. They are also heavier than single-use plastic, further increasing their carbon footprint in shipping.

The solution is to use the bags long enough to off-set the increased environmental impact. A cotton bag would have to be re-used 171 times to balance out it's environmental costs in comparison to a single use plastic bag. Even a paper bag has to be used three times to balance. Getting into the habit of using your reusable bag for every trip to the store is crucial to making it environmentally friendly.

Don't forget to wash your reusable bags frequently. Past attempts to justify the single-use plastic bag include claims that reusable bags are often contaminated with dangerous food-borne bacteria, leading to food poisoning. The risk of this is minimized by simply washing the bags, with or without bleach.

Of course, buying from Green Earth Organics reduces your bag usage a lot. Our bins would have the same issue as reusable bags, so we are sure to reuse our bins many, many times, washing them with biodegradable soap every time, and when they are too old to use to deliver to homes, they get retired to our warehouse, where they keep our shelves tidy by holding bags of rice, pasta, and more. If they are too beat up for that, they get used to hold food to be composted, saving the warehouse staff from having to go to the compost bin out front for every bad apple.

Living greener is often not as straight forward as we'd like, but we can all make the best choices we can every day to reduce our impact on this planet.

Green(er) Wrapping Options

Once you start looking, there are hundreds of environmentally-friendly gift wrapping ideas on the Internet. This makes sense: wrapping paper usually ends up in the landfill, thus increasing the environmental impact of the holiday season.

The alternatives to conventional gift wrapping range from simple changes in how you do things (using wrapping paper made of recycled materials and recycling it after) to more complicated or expensive options (buying or making fabric bags; wrapping gifts inside other gifts, like using a tablecloth to wrap a kitchen appliance).

There's something beautiful about a pile of wrapped gifts in seasonal colours and there's a child-like delight in tearing into a present, so I am always seeking ideas that would help capture those feelings but with less environmental impact. When deciding how to wrap a gift, I also try to remember that reusable gift wrapping that never gets reused might as well be disposable.

Refabrica is a Vancouver company making beautiful reusable gift bags out of reclaimed fabric that would otherwise end up in the landfill. They aren't inexpensive, but their beauty and functionality does increase the chances of them actually being re-gifted by the recipient. Refabrica bags are available at Scraps, the store we recently profiled.

Making your own fabric bags is pretty easy if you have access to a sewing machine. My mother made her's with drawstrings, but if that's beyond your sewing skills or time limitations, you can also just tie the ribbon around the outside. My Mom always gathers up all the fabric bags at the end of the family gift opening session and reuses them herself. To increase the fun of opening the gift, she uses tissue paper inside, which she also reuses.

If you are really attached to the "ripping it open" style of gift opening or if you know your gift recipient isn't likely to reuse the wrapping, it's time to go for something reused and/or recyclable.

In my house, we tend to reuse what little wrapping paper we receive. Each year, each piece gets a little smaller as we trim off the ripped and taped edges until it is almost more tape than paper and only useful for the smallest stocking stuffer. For the least impact, start with wrapping paper made with recycled paper and then recycle the scraps (wrapping paper that is 100% paper is recyclable in the yellow "mixed paper" bag in Vancouver; avoid foil and plastic wrappings and check with your local recycling depot outside of Vancouver). If your wrapping paper got a little too crunched up, place the paper on the ironing board, spritz with a little water and iron on a low setting to remove any wrinkles.

When I have a little more time, my favourite option for recyclable wrapping paper is plain butcher paper or blank newsprint (both are recyclable and biodegradable) stamped with a festive design. You can make your own stamps out of a cleaned piece of styrofoam (such as a meat tray or a piece of a take-out container). Just draw your design into the foam with a dull pencil or a pen and stamp. You don't need to be able to draw - simple geometric shapes and abstract squiggles work well. Stamp using non-toxic, waterbased ink for a rustic but festive look. You can enhance the package by tying it with raffia, twine, or some yarn.

For awkward shaped gifts, sometimes a gift bag works best. I like to buy the plain (recyclable) ones from dollar stores, decorate them with stamps as above or with the front panel of last year's received cards, then wrap the two handles together with raffia or fabric ribbon to increase the fun of opening it.

I'm always looking for more ideas, though, so what is your favourite way to give gifts in an eco-friendly way?

Handkerchiefs or facial tissues?

A handkerchief is actually a pretty useful item to carry around and probably due for a comeback. Besides, it's a lot better - in aesthetic terms and environmental ones - than those fidgety little plastic packages of facial tissues.

Whether it's for blowing noses, mopping sweaty brows, tying into an impromptu bag, or signaling surrender to enemies, handkerchiefs are undeniably handy. It can initially feel a little gross to put something used back in your pocket rather than in the trash, but just trust me that you'll get over it — things don't actually get all that messy, so just fold over the offending area and carry on.

If a handkerchief seems too old-fashioned, keep in mind that it's a heck of a lot more environmentally responsible than disposable tissues, and there's nothing outdated about that. It takes 90 years to grow a box of conventional disposable facial tissues - that's a lot of tree to use and toss.

Once you've amass a week's supply — simply toss the used one in the laundry hamper at the end of the day — you'll be fighting the end-of-summer sniffles in style.

To get started, you can buy handkerchiefs at a department store or check out some small BC businesses making organic cotton options (Hank & Cheef and Hankettes). You can also make your own handkerchiefs to get exactly the size and colour you want. If you don't want to just stuff the cloth in a pocket or purse, you can always try some fancy folding.

If after all that, you just can't manage to convince yourself to use a reusable cloth, you can always use Seventh Generation's facial tissues, made of 100% recycled paper and whitened with an environmentally safe process.