Can EcoLiving Be A Feminist Act? BlogHer Post

I'm a little behind in my cross-posting -- I put this post up on BlogHer on Friday, in response to the feature story in this month's Brain, Child. It's a great set of reflections from the author of Grassfed Gourmet (and a much more off-the-grid eco mama than me - think literal milking of the cows). I so agree with her; living sustainably doesn't have to be a throwback, antifeminist stance. Read more!

Eco-Friendly Auction Items

My kid's elementary school had an auction tonight and we were determined to both support our local public school and honor the spirit of April's Buy-Nothing Challenge.

In terms of what to give, we decided to go with eco/crunchy items that busy friends and neighbors might already covet but hadn't yet tracked down. Time is what we all really lack, right? Here are three ideas (phew, they all sold! and two people actually got into a bidding war for the cleaning basket so I'm making another!) in case you're trying to come up with something eco-friendly to give to an auction.

BYOBag Medley
2 reusable shopping bags (Get Hip Get Green and Make Love Not Carbon); 5 cloth produce/bulk/grain bags; 3 mesh produce bags; 1 string bag plus red string to tie around your finger to help you to remember to bring them to the store! (I got the bags at ReusableBags and ecobags)

Crunchy Lunch Bunch Basket
2 Kleen Kanteen stainless steel water bottles with sport tops; stainless steel containers (2 small, 2 large); 2 red check Wrap-N-Mat reusable sandwich holders; 1 box Cut-Rite waxed paper bags; 2 organic cotton lunch sacks with fabric markers (perfect art project!)

Mean Green Cleaning Machine Basket
3 spray bottles containing nontoxic, environmentally friendly cleaning concoctions (All-Purpose Cleaner, Window Wash, and Produce Wash) - plus recipes for these. Dozen assorted cloth rags, 2 natural cellulose sponges, Better Basics for the Home by Annie Berthold-Bond. I am a huge dork so I not only upcycled old baby towels for the rags (local towels! already passed down from another family to us! used by 4 kids!) but then geekily sewed heart shaped scraps on them with my freecycled sewing machine so the winners could feel all mellow and happy while they got their clean on. Also?! I found in *my* rag bag a Santa Cruz Earth Day t-shirt from '91 that had a big earth on it. It went front and center on one of the sewn cleaning-rag sandwiches. (Note: the All-Purpose Cleaner and Window Wash recipes are from Better Basics -- I used rosemary essential oil which is a natural antifungal and antibacterial agent; I steer clear of the popularly used tea tree and lavender oils as I have heard they may be linked to endocrine disruption aka man-boobs. Also? I skip fresh lemon juice although it's a great natural antiseptic since it has to be refrigerated. But good to keep in mind if you need to say, disinfect a cutting board on the spot.)

So that covered our contributions (hope the specifics are helpful for folks at the auction who asked me where to get particular items). But what to buy to support the school without acquiring stuff?

Luckily, in the thick of the auction organization team were both a former EWG staffer and an eco-minded neighbor (who jogged by me today with a bunch of newspaper bags for the dog park, talk about reuse and public awareness) who know their audience. I got this email titled Give Green at the School Auction just yesterday:

Hi MamaBird,

I know that April is your "don't buy a thing" month, which has got me thinking about some of my own impulse buys (stop me before I spend $5 on 73 perfect blueberries). So I wanted to let you know that I created two items at the school auction with people like you & me in mind: the Teacher Wish List and School Library Fund. We don't (just) want more stuff, we want to contribute to the school.

We asked the teachers and staff to give us their "wish lists." We think you'll agree that this is what the auction is all about -- providing the resources that our teachers need.

Teacher's Wish List: On every teacher and staff member's list (it would be wonderful to fulfill this dream!) - A working copy machine and a supply of paper.

Um, be still my beating heart. When I taught I used to spend half my life (and disposable income) at Kinko's and the other half breathing purple ditto paper fumes. I cannot believe that I didn't know my kid's teachers don't have enough paper or a functioning copy machine. We totally leapt at that one. And we won a bowling party for my daughter with her teacher (yeah!) and a behind-the-scenes tour of the National Zoo for her and some friends.

Rockin' night and relieved to report, a pretty non-consumptive night after all, despite money changing hands for good reason.

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Goods for Girls

I've been meaning to explain the Goods for Girls button on my sidebar for ages. And fortuitously, while I have been dilly-dallying, they've gotten an easy cash donation process up for those of us who don't sew!

This is one of those no-brainer situations where a)it's a great cause, b)the person involved is skimming approximately zero off the top, and c)it's easy to give. If you're looking for a worthwhile place to give your green (or your hand-sewn organic flannel sanitary items) look no further.

Crunchy Chicken, an environmentalist mom (which is an understatement - she's amazing) who blogs from Seattle, got motivated when she heard about a huge Proctor & Gamble campaign to give out free, plastic-wrapped tampons in Africa. Great idea, she thought, poor execution (and holy ulterior motive). Most women in these areas are currently using rags, and cultural practices may or may not support tampon usage. Even more importantly, as Crunchy points out, most of the villages in the regions affected still burn their trash.

In many areas of the world, access to adequate menstrual supplies is difficult to come by. Many women and girls rely on rags, newspaper, camel skin or nothing at all for their menstrual needs. A lack of sanitary pads can be a big barrier to a girl's education.

It may seem difficult to comprehend for many women who have easy access to a varied source of supplies, but we can all appreciate how difficult life would be without them. Imagine trying to go to school or work without protection. For many, it brings life to a halt.

Providing disposable supplies creates an additional burden on some communities where solid waste disposal consists of burning the garbage. Since many disposable feminine hygiene products contain plastic, incineration potentially creates an environmental and health hazard.

Thanks for reading!

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Children Are Greener than Green

Don’t you just love your little leprechauns? All zero-population-growth qualms aside, I have to say that the little people I know are awfully green. Why, may you ask?

Well, most kids I know are water conservationists: they passionately hate showers and baths. Because of their heightened awareness of the shortage of potable water worldwide, of course. Most kids I know go even further and help their parents to conserve water. By shrieking in horror when you disappear behind the non-vinyl hemp shower curtain, toddlers keep your shower time to a mere 17 seconds -- one or two times a week.

The little green ones are also food politicos who’ve been keeping tabs on the news: they want to eat PB&Js 24-7 as a vegan, lower-their-food miles statement (I swear I heard my 4 year old asking if that was local jam…).

The baby enviros also want to wear the same clothes every day and they don't care if they are dirty. Reuse, baby! They can run around in 20 below wind chill in a t shirt (so don't blame them if your thermostat's high) and they would really rather walk than barf in that car while you burn fossil fuels, mom. They really can't get their mouths around those disposable plastic water bottles anyways so you'd better bring a refillable metal sippy for your Baby Greens. They fuel the hand me down chain (everything once worn by an older cousin has indisputable cachet) and finally, our little leprechauns would be happy playing in the recycling (toilet paper trumpet, anyone?) if we'd just let them.

If you’re not ready to just sit and bask in the reflected green glory of your offspring, here are some resources for environmentally friendly St. Patrick’s Day celebrations:

Lucky fruit salad and other natural green food ideas (homemade spinach pasta, anyone?)...

Not-fake-chemical green dye (for the cupcake frosting!)...

Slow food alternatives to corned beef and cabbage (like Shepherd’s Pie, mmm)... and a

Wiki for "Organic local solar powered booze"!

Happy St. Patty's Day! I’d love to know the ways in which your kids kick your enviro arse!


*Photo courtesy of Michal Zacharzewski, SXC

Original DC Metro Moms post.
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Reading Up for A Green New Year

Poster child for Carol Gilligan here. Tell me your life story and I am yours. My librarian at my elementary school used to set aside biographies in stacks for me. Didn't matter the person involved. Nowadays with time being short I tend to try to read about folks I want to emulate.

I have *really* been enjoying reading about people who are trying to live green and chronicling their lives day by day (ie taking on some new enviro lifestyle change every day). It's certainly changed my paradigm (one woman in Canada has unplugged her fridge and given up toilet paper! Me? SO light green. Her? Darker than forest.) You might be into some of them, too, so here's my faves:

• Green as A Thistle...in which aforementioned young Canadian explores life without tp among other moves
• Going Green...in which a suburban mother makes enviro choices in the DC area
• Fake Plastic Fish...in which one woman systematically tries to rid herself of plastic

Got any daily-change-type blogs you'd like to share? I'm so into learning by imitation -- I'd rather watch someone program my remote than read the manual.... Read more!

BS and V (Green Clean Duo)

Lucky for me, the nesting frenzy I had right before procreating five years ago has carried me a ways down the parenting road. In a prescient moment while swollen like a tick with my darling daughter, I realized if I didn't act immediately to start a green cleaning routine pre-kids it would never happen.

Said cleaning routine's been pretty much undisturbed for about 5 years now. I must say that I need this routine to be automatic so I basically clean everything with baking soda and vinegar.

Many people have asked me what recipes I use to clean and I would like to say that Annie Berthold-Bond's book is my favorite on this topic; I consult it whenever I, say, have an ant infestation and can't remember what repels them safely (cinnamon).

My faux spray cleaner is just water, vinegar, and eco-friendly detergent. I mix them in a bottle with roughly 2/3 warm water and 1/3 vinegar with a squirt of dish soap (in my inaugural and never-repeated use of my label-maker, I printed out the recipe and stuck it onto the spray bottle, which was a key move in those early days post-partum when I was a complete germ fanatic but also suffering from total nursing brain death). I no longer measure out ingredients, I just make sure I have more than enough vinegar and soap in the bottle. This works for bathrooms, counter tops, floors, you name it.

To clean baked on pans I put baking soda on with enough water to make a paste and leave it overnight. This also works for cleaning your oven but it's very messy. And you all probably remember from scouting that if you're out of toothpaste you can use baking soda mixed with salt.

To clean my toilets, I mix vinegar and baking soda right in the bowl (those of you who have made play-dough volcanoes will be able to imagine the fizzing). Baking soda's a great scourer for things like bathtubs and the vinegar gets rid of soap scum.

I abandoned essential oils a while back when I learned that lavender oil and tea tree oil may cause hormone disruption in boys (holy man-boobs Batman!) but should you desire a kitchen-y smell, rosemary is also a natural antiseptic about which I've heard nary a bad word. So's lemon juice but you'd have to refrigerate that mix...which means, of course, that it's too high maintenance for me to use. Worth keeping in mind as one's trying to disinfect a cutting board tho. And speaking of lovely smells, don't fret, the vinegar scent while you're cleaning dissipates rapidly. Vinegar itself can be used in open bowls to remove bad smells (smoke, vomit) from the air.

For dishwasher detergent, I tried making my own (boric acid, baking soda, etc.) but was beyond dissatisfied with the results. I now use Trader Joe's liquid with vinegar as my rinse agent (which does interesting things to aluminum, I realized belatedly) to get rid of any chemical taste (I had to stop using commercial dishwasher detergent while pregnant with Kid 2 as the residue was making me gag).

Since the things I do clean with are pretty simple, a lot of cleaning green for me has meant stopping the use of more toxic products. One of the biggest offenders for the environment is bleach, and I was reminded recently why via a Grist Q&A-- producing bleach creates dioxins, and using bleach may produce carcinogens that harm you and marine life. So although my whites may be a little dingy (no tomato stains, though -- leave them out in the sun! no kidding, a little vinegar and sunshine and they disappear) we are pretty confident that our kids and dog aren't being harmed while we clean. Read more!

More Better Bunk

A couple people wrote to tell me they liked yesterday's post about stuff so I thought I would share some particularly compelling writing (not mine, these guys'):

Check out this article as it lays out the anti-consumerism message so eloquently: "Our happiness does not depend on the consumption of conventional economic goods and services, but instead is enhanced when we have more time and space for socializing, for nature, for learning, and for really living instead of just consuming." Yup. When above a certain threshold, of course, which nearly everyone we know is.

Then there's this MoJo article from back in the spring written by Bill McKibben which has an amazing take on our desire to consume from a historical and anthropological standpoint. It hit upon all the nagging questions I had -- doesn't money equate with happiness if you're living in a shack? (yes, but only up to about $10K a year) and don't we need huge industrial farms to feed all the people on the planet? (no, they are actually less productive than small farms using mutually sustainable systems instead of chemical pesticides and fertilizers and he backs it up with large scale research done in developing countries). He also notes that our American psyche developed in the roots of some serious poverty and that the Founders were right to focus on economic growth when our ancestors only had one dress to wear (if they were lucky gals) and no shoes.

McKibben cites research on happiness pointing to more sustainable ways of living (note to self, gotta read this book by a 2003 Nobel Prize-winning economist) -- like the fact that having social networks makes you physically stronger as well as happier (a researcher injected flu viruses in college students' noses to prove this, which is amusing considering, well, the kids who got sick might actually have a word or two to say about how much happier that participant fee made them!), bringing us full circle to the idea that acting in environmentally sound ways being better for us as well as the planet. Going to a farmer's market involves 10x the human interaction aka connections than going to a grocery store.

Even better if you can swing actually going as a family instead of depleting all of your marriage capital for the weekend by leaving the children with your spouse for hours while you fetch said sustainably-produced farm products. Convenience did emerge for a reason, so we could spend more time with our families instead of churning butter.... If we're really hanging out with our peeps (which I guarantee this unit is as much as humanly possible) instead of jumping on the hamster wheel to churn out more duckets, it makes the sustainable food endeavor somewhat like being a Luddite as I tap my computer keys. My Polyface beef bones are in day one of a three-day long simmer into delightful stock as I write, and that whole process, beneficial as it is to the environment (local farmer!) and to our health (grass-fed!) is not without its cost (procuring the food, preparing it=time not focused on those I love). But that's a whole 'nother struggle: enviro-friendly, slow-food savoring vs efficiency and convenience, which doesn't have to instantly translate into the Golden Arches, just less prep more family time). Whew! I'll stop hair-splitting here.

(Couple quick shares: When Santa Turned Green looks so cute and perfect, you should snap it up to put in your kid's Christmas stocking wait until it comes to your local library and borrow it!

For those of you who are following the presidential election lead-up, I've found my fave new source of campaign news: Political Nanny.) Read more!