Green Halloween

Mwah ha ha ha... (eeeek!!!)

I consider myself to be more green than average, but for a one day a year event I'm willing to let my green standards slide a bit. Life is about balance, after all.

Then it occurred to me that we're already pretty green in our approach to Halloween. Check it out:

1) Our kids carry the same pumpkin shaped buckets every year.

2) They're wearing the same costumes as last year (their choice).

3) We use tea light candles in our pumpkins instead of flashlights.

4) We roast and eat the pumpkin seeds, and compost the rest of the pumpkin.

5) We keep most of the interior lights in the house off to make it more spooky (leaving enough light outside for trick or treaters to see, of course).

6) My kids have been trained to not litter, or walk through people's gardens.

I'm sure there are more, but the time has come to get the kids up for school. Maybe I'll continue this, after the event, if I notice anything else noteworthy.

Happy Halloween, everyone!!

Preparing Strawberries For Winter

OK... I got the mulch part right, but apparently I trimmed them too soon.

Preparing strawberries for winter involves little more than covering them with hay or some other breathable mulch that will give them some protection from the frost.

I trimmed mine as well, but I'm reading now that this is not always beneficial, as this can stimulate new growth which can be damaged by the cold (makes sense).

Oops ;-) Next time I'll do some research before heading outside with my pruning shears...

More About Our New Energy Star Windows

Ahhhh!!! Warm house in the chilly autumn :-)

Not only are the new Energy Star windows good at keeping the cold out, they're also good at containing the heat.

My Dad is visiting and staying in our basement suite, so I have the electric baseboard heater turned up to 20C (68F) for his comfort. I am noticing that the entire house is warmer, whereas for his visits prior to the installation of the new windows, the heat on in the basement would not have made a difference upstairs.

This to me reflects the benefit of the fact that the heat is no longer escaping through drafty basement windows...

Oprah and Kindle

Amazon's new wireless reading device, Kindle, is a way for avid bookworms to indulge in their favourite hobby and save trees at the same time.

It is an electronic device, for which you can buy memory cards, onto which you can download and keep books. Instead of having heaps and heaps of paper, you have one hand held tool in which to store all of your reading material.

Not only is it green for not requiring paper, it's frugal as well : after the initial device purchase, down loadable books are far less expensive than the paper version.

Hmmm. This might be on my Christmas list ;-)

Are New Windows Really Less Drafty?

You bet!!!!

Since having our new windows installed, I can leave the heat turned off all day, and the room temperature will dip by only .5 to 1 degree (10 degrees colder outside). With the old glass, the house would have gotten down at least 3 or 4 degrees, if not more.

In fact, last night when Heat Junkie Hubby came home, I forgot to turn the furnace back on (usually I scoot over to the thermostat when I see his car pull in the driveway ;-) He gets home at about 5:30, and it wasn't until the kids' bedtime that I realized I'd forgotten. Meanwhile DH hadn't said a word, 'cause he was still comfortably warm.

Now the unfortunate part is that we have to pay for the windows (not like we can return 'em!!). Over the long term, though, they will save us money (plus the house looks so much nicer :-) !!

Energy Star Window Rebate

Arrrrgh...

Maybe it was me not paying enough attention or maybe I wasn't given adequate information, but check this out:

in order to qualify for an Energy Star window rebate, you have to have an energy assessment done on your home BEFORE and after installation of your new windows.

(Let me reiterate: before AND after...not just after). In other words, if you do what I did and wait until the work is complete before contacting the Energy Star folks, it's too late.

Needless to say, I'm a little more than annoyed. It's just a little frustrating, because if the old windows were so flippin' efficient, why would we spend thousands of dollars replacing them?

OMG.

Anyway, I just wanted to share this nugget of info with anyone out there who might end up in the same boat. If you haven't had your energy related home renos done yet, visit www.livesmartbc.ca FIRST.

Good luck...

J

Starch Based Shopping Bags - A Plastic Bag Alternative

A Vancouver based company called EPI Environmental Technologies has created an additive to plastic bags that makes them biodegradable. These bags have been sold for years to chains such as Wal-Mart (US), T&T Supermarket (Canada), Thrifty Foods (Canada), The Body Shop (international), Roots (US) and Tesco (UK), to name a few.

My Mother-In-Law told me recently that she had an older plastic bag from one of these stores which crumbled apart when she tried to open it up. She was quite impressed with the way that the bag had broken down, saying that she thinks it was definitely more green that the traditional plastic.

Let's keep these ones! I think that in general a ban on plastic bags is a good thing, but there should be some available for some instances. For example, if I buy a meat product, the packaging sometimes leaks, and I want to be able to put it in a plastic bag. I wouldn't want raw ground beef soaking into my reusable cloth shopping bag.

Let's ban the full plastic bags, and keep the ones manufactured by companies like EPI that crumble as they age. Sounds like a practical and green compromise to me.

5 Green Things I'm Thankful For

On this Thanksgiving Day, I'm thankful for...

1) the beautiful sage green walls in my living room? (lol, ok that's not earth friendly ;-)

Start again:

1) the large yard we have that has room for a veggie garden

2) the fact that we have a yard so it's easy to compost

3) the new windows we're getting next week that will enable us to keep the heat turned down more this winter

4) the curbside recycling pick-up service we have in our city

5) lol the fact that my laptop can go into standby and save power while it's waiting for me to blog...

Green Gadget

This one's kinda fun... a jacket with a solar module for charging your iPod. I could have used one of those when we were camping, lol.

No need for batteries or an electrical outlet - just good ol' sunshine. Now if only I could get it to make dinner for me too...

Seriously, What Is Wrong With People??

No single initiative can ever please everyone.

Take the planned wind turbine for the top of Grouse Mountain, for example. This is a green source of energy (really? something green?), and there are actually people who oppose it.

The main two arguments appear to be aesthetics, and injury to birds and bats.

(Um... what?)

OK, (sigh). I'll go ahead an address the aesthetic issue. Have they seen photos of Beijing and its smog? All from, UM, NON-GREEN ENERGY? So which is worse, a mountain with a little wind turbine sticking out of it, or

(me resisting the fist-clenching urge to type in all caps again)

one you can't see at all???

As for the birds and bats, while it is unfortunate that some of them may fly into the blades of the turbine, I'm willing to bet that many die on a regular basis as a direct result of pollution.

"This is [an issue of] green energy versus protecting wildlife,"
Coun. Lisa Muri

Huh??? What???

(more fist clenching)

BIG PICTURE, people, big picture.

One opponent even went as far as to call the turbine, which will provide enough clean energy for 400 homes, "another tourist attraction."

Oh my God.

Whatever...

Cutting Costs By Telecommuting

There appears to be an answer in sight to the high costs associated with commuting to and from work: more and more companies are considering telecommuting as a viable option.

It's one thing to surf the net and find obscure articles about telework and its pros and cons, but to see an article in your newspaper naming major companies who are adopting the trend is really a good sign.

I actually know two TELUS employees who work from home - they're Customer Service Reps for Mobility. When you call in with a question about your TELUS cell phone, there's a good chance you'll get one of the company's work at home staff, who can access your account and offer you assistance on a TELUS computer in their home office.

This is all very regulated, of course, and is offered only to employees with some tenure and a good track record. Calls are monitored and stats are kept electronically, which are used to measure employee performance.

The company computer must be in a separate work space free from distractions, and children must of course be with a babysitter (so it's not like running a home based business - the employee reports for work and logs in at the start of the scheduled shift, and takes calls as though working in the company building). TELUS has supplied all the necessary hardware, phone and network connections, which are entirely separate from the employee's personal equipment.

My two friends with this job say that it's worth the hoops they jump through to abide by company monitoring, and it's worth using some of their home square footage for company equipment, because the money and the time they save by not commuting is significant.

Hopefully other companies who have not tried this option will see its success in action and introduce similar programs as well. Here's hoping!!

Brrrr...

We get new (double paned, LowE2) windows installed on the 16th, but meanwhile it's not so toasty being green!

I'm huddled over my laptop trying to keep warm, thinking about all the $$$ I'm saving keeping the furnace off. Hubby thinks I'm nuts. He doesn't handle the cold well. What the hell, once he chisels the ice out of his moustache he should be fine.

Wimp.

Earth Overshoot Day

This is really interesting... check out this post at www.green-blog.org. They talk about the fact that each year, we consume more resources than the planet produces each year, so we end up finishing each year by dipping into the resources of the future (kind of like spending more than you earn, and making ends meet with credit while you accumulate more debt).

They refer to the point in the year when our consumption passes the planets' production as "Earth Overshoot Day", and each year it gets earlier and earlier.

Oops.

If their sources were accurate, this is interesting and quite a wake up call...

A Cue From Costco: No Plastic Bags!

Costco... gotta love that place. Stuff stuff and more stuff, and deals to be had (if you keep on top of prices).

It never occurred to me before, until Susan from http://www.bagsontherun.com/ mentioned it in a post, that Costco doesn't use plastic bags (unless you purchase meat, and this is for sanitary reasons). The rest of your goods must be brought home in used boxes, which they'll provide, or your own tubs or bags that you bring.

We use those purple "bin shoppin' " tubs that you can buy at Superstore - my husband lays them out in the back of the car, and then we fill them from the shopping cart. Many of the things you buy at Costco are in bulk anyway (i.e. flats of juice or canned soup) so bags are irrelevant.

Hmmm... save money AND the environment! Guess we'll keep shopping there :-)