What’s up with the weather?
Mar 29, 2008 Environment
Now, I’m not one to complain about the weather. I barely notice the rain in Vancouver: when everyone is whining that it’s horrible outside, I put on good clothing, roll down the rain cover on our stroller and go for a walk with my ever happy dog. I enjoy the creepiness of the fog, I love snow and I usually take warm spells in stride. But today is something else, something so out of the ordinary that I had to talk about it.
It’s snowing. No big deal for Quebeckers, although even in the East when it snows on March 29 people tend to complain and long for warmer weather. But I’m not in Quebec. I’m in Vancouver. It barely EVER snows here. We had two snow events this year. The snow stuck for only one of those, and even then, only for 24 hours. Now this week, we had hail, a thunderstorm, snow and then today more hail. So much hail, as a matter of fact, that it covered the ground in about 10 minutes. Now, a few hours later, it is turning to rain and it will soon have melted from the roads, but there is still about two inches of the white stuff on the roofs.
In Vancouver, spring usually starts some time in February. The daffodils have been out for a while. The cherry trees are in bloom.
Crazy I say, crazy. If only people could stop saying: “Where is that global warming they’re talking about?” This IS global warming. Total fucked up weather. Happy earth hour tonight…
Earth Hour 2008
Mar 28, 2008 Environment
On this Saturday, March 29 at 8 pm, millions of people will turn of their lights for an hour to take a stand against global warming. This initiative, created by the World Wildlife Fund, started in Sidney, Australia last year. They were hoping for a 5% decrease in energy consumption during that hour. The saving was more than 10%. This year, more than 150 cities are participating in Canada alone! Many buildings and landmarks will go dark during that hour, including the CN Tower. Businesses as well as simple citizens around the world are registering at earthhour.org their pledge to turn off their lights for an hour.
I’m in. Are you?
There is no more lead in MY dinnerware… I think…
Nov 19, 2007 Environment, Less toxic, Resources
I have been delaying writing a follow-up post to “I’m sorry, why is there lead in my dinnerware?” for a while, however after hearing last week a very unsettling news report out of Utah, in which a toddler may have suffered lead poisoning in utero and from breast milk due to her mother’s exposure to the lead glaze on their Gibson Overseas dinner plates, it was pretty hard to delay it further.
A few months back I contacted a number of dinnerware manufacturers – Corelle, Dansk, Dudson, Homer Laughlin China Co., Ikea, Lenox, Mikasa, and Pfaltzgraft – to see if any of their dinnerware products were lead-free. Of these eight manufactures two (Mikasa and Dudson) have never replied, perhaps because they didn’t like the question, or worse, they didn’t know the answer.
Luckily six manufacturers were nice enough to provide some information about their products. Below are the important excerpts from their emails:
Corelle
Our specifications are that stoneware products and glazes are made of clay-based materials and glazes used throughout the industry. Decorations, if present, are made from low-lead enamels and fired at temperatures exceeding 1000 degrees F, which binds any heavy metals both physically and chemically so that their release is minimized.
Dansk
All Dansk dinnerware is made Lead Free.
Homer Laughlin China Co
All of our ceramic products meet the requirements of California’s Proposition 65 for lead and cadmium release. We meet the technical requirements to be called lead free and cadmium free. As we are sure you know, there are trace amounts of lead in the atmosphere which make it impossible to be 100% lead free. You can be sure that our products are as free of lead and cadmium as it is scientifically possible to be.
Ikea
The IKEA product range is subjected to comprehensive tests and complies with the strictest applicable laws and safety standards, and we have detailed regulations on the use of chemicals and other substances in the manufacturing process. If one country tightens its rules, we introduce these new regulations on all IKEA markets, whenever possible. The lead and lead compounds are not allowed to be used and the contamination limit value adopted at IKEA is 100 mg lead/kg.Note: We followed up with Ikea to see if they could clarify what their reference of 100 mg lead/kg was all about and although they have not yet responded to us we did find the following at the bottom of one of the pages in their catalog:
All Ikea ceramics for preparing and serving food are lead- and cadmium safe. This means no heavy metals may be transfered from the glaze to the foodstuffs. For products which come into contact with food. Ikea imposes tougher criteria than the law demands. And tests are made regularly.
Lenox
In response to your inquiry regarding the lead content in our products, lead can be found in our tableware, crystal products and hand-painted products.
Pfaltzgraff
It is our Company Policy to use only lead-free glazes, pigments or decals in our porcelain, stoneware, china and earthenware products. We know of no company with a more stringent policy with respect to the use of lead, cadmium and other contaminants than Pfaltzgraff.
So what is a consumer to do? Well, we immediately took Lenox and Corelle off of our shopping list, followed by Homer Laughlin China Co. simply because we were not overly fond of their style. Next we tried to look for Dansk, but unfortunately we could not find any company selling their dinnerware locally. That only left us with: Pfaltzgraff, Ikea, using glass dinnerware or starting the process all over again.
We hesitated for a while between Pfaltzgraff and Ikea. Pfaltzgraff had some nicer looking dishes, but they all seemed to be made in Asia and we were hoping on finding something made a little closer to home. Ikea in turn had not bad looking dishes made in Europe, Asia, etc. but some of the sets didn’t have any cups. In the end we decided that if we were going to buy dinnerware from a-far, we may as well pick the nicest style, and so we are now eating off of brand new white, stoneware Pfaltzgraff dishes.
The problem with being a consumer, is at the end of the day, it all comes down to blind trust. You can be informed and careful until the cows come home, but unless you can take every product that you purchase into a professional lab for testing, on some level you have to believe that these companies – who are often solely accountable to their shareholders – are doing the testing and have the quality control that they claim to. These days, that is more trust than I have… Which is why although there shouldn’t be any lead in our dinnerware, according to its manufacturer, unless we get it tested I will always have a little spec of doubt! Maybe we should have went for glass dinnerware…
Now, what about the glaze in our slow-cooker… is it lead-free?
Cloth Diapering – How?
Nov 14, 2007 Environment, Family life, Gear, Resources
Using cloth diapers is not as complicated as people may think, but there are a lot of things to think about and when you have never seen anyone use them, it can certainly be intimidating at first. So here is a summary of what it has been like for us.
We have decided to buy Mother-Ease diapers on the recommendation of a friend, and we are totally satisfied with them. We can get them in local stores, but also online for a very small shipping fee, and they are made in Ontario. The service is great and from what I have heard, the quality of the products is hard to beat. We have 36 of what they call One-Size diapers, which fit a child from birth to potty-training. You can adjust them by folding them differently and using different sets of snaps (no pins needed). All you need to do is change the size of cover you use as your child grows. A cover (which also closes with snaps or velcro) is necessary to make your diapers waterproof, and the perk of the Mother-Ease covers is that they are made of polyurethane laminate (PUL), which breathes a little and is one of the safest plastics out there health-wise. Some people also use wool covers, which I haven’t tried, but apparently they work very well and obviously, they are more environmentally-friendly than plastic ones.
There are other options out there, for instance all-in-one diapers, which have a cover and diaper sown together. They make things more easy as you have only one thing to worry about, but they are more expensive, take longer to dry and wear off faster as you end up washing the cover with every use. There are other fitted diapers that come in different sizes to accommodate your baby’s growth, as well as prefolds, which have to be folded and attached with a fastener or pins. All in all, it seemed to us that the one-size diaper was a good option, cheaper than most, as your diapers grow with your baby, but of good quality, which makes life easier.
Our diapers are made of bamboo, which is probably the greenest option at this time. Bamboo grows quickly without the need for pesticides, and it is naturally antibacterial. It also absorbs more, so the diapers can be trimmer for the same absorbency, although it does make them dry more slowly. Mother-Ease also sells cotton and organic cotton diapers.
When your baby gets older, you may need a bit more absorbency, especially at night or for longer trips. You can simply add liners to your diapers. Mother-Ease makes some (bamboo or cotton) that snap into the diaper, but there are also other companies making hemp or cotton liners out there. We use a stay-dry liner made of a wicking fabric to keep our baby’s bum dry since he seems prone to rashes, but a lot of people do without them or make their own by cutting fleece into the desired shape and size.
You don’t need to bleach diapers. Actually, you shouldn’t bleach them as it will make them wear faster. If your baby is exclusively breast-fed, their poop is water soluble and therefore, you don’t even have to get rid of it before you wash the diapers. You just need to do a pre-rinse. Since we don’t have that option on our apartment’s laundry room’s washers, we rinse the diapers first with the help of a diaper sprayer hooked onto our toilet. You can also use flushable liners to flush out the poop. Either way, your baby’s poop is eliminated the same way yours is: down the sewer, where it can be properly taken care of.
The only thing you have to be weary of is laundry soaps. Some will not work well with cloth diapers because they leave residues behind that can build up and make your diapers stink. So you need to go with something simple, preferably with no perfume and additive of any sort. We found two Web sites that rate laundry detergent for use with cloth diapers (Diaper Jungle and Pinstripes and Polkadots). We use Country Save (sold at London Drugs, but call first as we found that not all stores carry it) and we are extremely happy with the result as well as the price. You also need to use very little detergent, again to avoid build-up issues. That makes laundering your own diapers even cheaper.
Many people prefer to use a diaper service, which costs a bit more but simplifies your life. You drop your diapers in the bag given to you buy the service, and once a week they pick up the used diapers and drop a bag of clean diapers. This way uses less water as the diapers are washed in big batches, but the services have to use bleach and harsher soaps as the diapers are used on different babies all the time, and the diapers used are generally not as high quality, and therefore not as user-friendly.
Most people these days use a dry-pail method, which means that they just put wet and soiled (rinsed or not, depending) diapers in their diaper pail and take them out on laundry day. A washable diaper pail bag makes things all the more easy as you empty it in the washer, then drop the bag in the washer, too. The other method, called wet pail, consists of storing soiled and wet diapers in a pail containing a bit of water and either a bit of detergent or baking soda, or some other recipe (there seems to be as many as there are cloth diapered babies). In my experience it is unnecessary and make things harder on laundry day as the pail is a lot heavier to handle.
A lot of our friends use disposable diapers when they are out and about, but we just carry a dry bag (the type made for kayaking, like this) which is very light and small to carry when empty, yet can fit several used diapers. Since we use wash cloths and water instead of wipes, we just put a few wet ones in a Ziploc bags, and we’re ready to go! We have never had any problem. Sure, you do have to change the diapers more often than you would have with disposables, but you should be changing them often anyway for your baby’s health.
I’m sure that I’m forgetting some info, but I would be happy to answer any question on the subject. There is also a lot of information on the Internet on various websites. A good way to start if you are interested in cloth diapering is to join a forum online. Again, Mother-Ease has a very good one with a lot of savvy moms giving advice to the newbies.
Happy diapering!
Malkolm the Birder Boy
Nov 9, 2007 Environment, Outdoors
Some people know how to raise a child!
We recently heard of Malkolm Boothroyd, an avid birder who decided to take a year to go birdwatching all through Canada and the United States without using fossil fuel for his transportation. From his home in Yukon to Florida, he will mostly bike while observing as many birds as possible (his goal is 500), raising money for bird conservancy along the way – oh, and also inspiring other people to get off their butts and do something, for a change.
Malkolm is 15… He’s taking this trip with his parents (can you imagine the bonding opportunity, at an age when most teenagers are barely ever home), but he’s the one who had the idea of the trip. And he had to do three school years in two in order to be able to take a year off. Something tells me that he doesn’t have a drug problem…
I don’t want to discredit Malkolm himself – he seems to have an awesome personality and the debate of nature vs nurture is not settled yet. But still. His parents must have done a decent job of raising him! It helps, I guess, that his dad is an author, photographer and film-maker who fought for the conservation of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.
Malkolm has recorded 357 birds as of today. He’s well on track to reaching his gold. Kudos to him, and good luck on his trip and in his efforts to make the world a better place for birds – and for all of us by the same occasion.
You can eat local in November and December
Nov 6, 2007 Environment, Miscellaneous, Resources
Many people associate eating local produce with the summer months: the days are long, there are fresh fruits and veggies galore, and you can buy produce directly from farmers at your local farmers’ market, or at the very least at your local grocer, with little effort. However come fall, winter and spring, eating local increasingly becomes a challenge as farmers’ markets wrap up and many stores strip their shelves of local produce in favor of items imported from around the world. To help spread the word about local produce, Get Local BC has put together a seasonal produce chart (PDF) which lists what British Columbia produce is available during a given month. The following is the list of local produce available during November and December:
Apples, Beets, Broccoli, Brussel Sprouts, Cabbage, Carrots, Cauliflower, Chanterelles, Chard, Garlic, Honey, Kale, Kiwis, Lobster Mushrooms,Yellow Onions, Oilseeds, Parsnips, Pears, Potatoes, Shittake Mushrooms, Spinach, Sprouts, Truffles, Winter Squash, Red Fife Wheat, Cucumbers, Eggplant, Peppers, Tomatoes, Eggs, Dairy Products, Beef, Chicken, Turkey, Pork, Ostrich, Pacific Halibut, Pacific Cod, Dungeness Crab, Side Strip Shrimp, Spot Prawns, Pacific Sardines, Clams, Oysters, Mussels.
Finding local produce is not as hard as you may think: this Saturday marks the start of Vancouver’s Winter Farmers Market, which runs every second and fourth Saturday until the end of April at the Wise Hall (1882 Adanac Street at Victoria Drive). Maybe we’ll see you there!
Cloth Diapering – Why?
Nov 6, 2007 Environment, Family life, Gear, Less toxic, Resources
The number one reason why people don’t use cloth diaper is probably that they don’t know enough about them and they think they are awfully complicated to use… It sure is the first thing that came to my mind when I first considered diapers. I will address that concern later in the – How? sequel to this post, but I decided to start with the main reasons why people do use cloth diapers: money, environment and health.
Cloth diapers cost less than disposables. Sure, there is an initial investment involved, and it can seem quite costly if you purchase good quality diapers (which will pay off later, because if you buy cheap ones, you may not stick to it and they will have little resale value when you get sick of them). For instance, we bought about $600 worth of diapers when preparing for the arrival of our baby. You need to put the money upfront, but it’s nothing compared to the cost of disposables, especially if you plan on having more than one child. According to some sources, disposable diapers and wipes cost around $2000 over the life of one child. Of course, you have to factor laundry and reusable washcloths into the cloth diaper equation. The estimates I have seen added another $400 for laundry. You are still at about half the cost of disposables. That’s really straightforward! A diaper service is more expensive and can get close to the price of disposables, but most estimates still put them a bit cheaper. And there is a large market for second hand reusable diapers if your stash is still in good condition when you are done with diapering.
The number two reason, which was number one for us, is environmental factors. Some people disagree with that, saying that if you factor in the water needed for laundry, rinsing diapers or flushing diaper liners, the harsh soap and bleach needed, etc., cloth is not any better than disposables. But after doing a lot of research, I disagree. First, you don’t need bleach or harsh soap. We use an environmental, biodegradable, phosphate-free detergent, and very little of it, and our diapers are perfectly clean. Also, even if it is true that cloth diapers need quite a bit of water (although there are several ways to save on that front too), it is too easy to forget that water is also needed to manufacture disposable diapers. How much? Well, that’s the catch: the numbers most people use are provided by disposable diapers manufacturers, which are a doubtful source, to say the least. And you still need to factor in all the other resources needed to manufacture thousands of disposable diapers as opposed to only a few dozens of cloth ones (you can further reduce the impact of those by buying organic cotton or bamboo diapers). Finally, there is the issue of disposing of the diapers. They fill up the landfill, they pollute tremendously (it is actually illegal to dispose of human waste in garbage, but who actually washes poop off from disposables?), they don’t break down at all, and even so-called biodegradable disposables won’t actually degrade since they will be nicely packaged in plastic garbage bags and stuck in the middle of a landfill.
But even if cloth diapers were not actually better for the environment than disposable ones, there would still be the issue of health. Disposable diapers are full of toxic chemicals. Here is what the Less Toxic Guide has to say on the matter:
Harmful ingredients: dye, fragrance, plastic, toluene, xylene, ethylbenzene, dipentene
Disposable diapers consist of a plastic exterior, an inner super-absorbent layer treated with chemicals, and a liner. One commonly used absorbent chemical, sodium polyacrylate, can trigger allergic reactions. Disposable diapers may also contain dyes and dioxin, a carcinogenic by-product of the chlorine bleaching process.
A study conducted by Anderson Laboratories in 1999 and published in the Archives of Environmental Health found that disposable diapers release volatile organic chemicals (VOCs), including toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene and dipentene. All of these VOCs have been shown to have toxic health effects, such as cancer and brain damage, with long-term or high level exposure.
The researchers also discovered that mice exposed to the chemicals released by disposable diapers were more likely to experience irritated airways than mice exposed to emissions from cloth diapers. These effects were increased during repeat exposures. The authors suggested that disposable diapers may cause “asthma-like” reactions and urged more study into a possible link between diaper emissions and asthma.
That almost says it all… Except for the issue of heat: disposables tend to heat up the skin more because they breath less, which is bad especially for little boys whose fertility can suffer.
On top of those three main reasons, there are a few bonus ones. For instance, cloth diapers (at least good quality ones) work better. In 3 months now, I have never had a leak, whereas people using disposables complain about them all the time. They also look better, at least in my opinion, and they seem more comfortable for the baby (would you prefer paper or cloth underwear?). They seem to make potty-training easier, as the toddler can feel the wetness better than in disposables. Finally, cloth diapered babies seem to have less rashes… Maybe because you tend to change cloth diapers more often – disposables should be changed just as often, but since they absorb so much, people are less likely to.
Are there downsides to cloth diapers? Sure: you have to wash them, but it’s not as complicated as people think. You have to bring them back if you use them while you’re away from home. And they are more bulky, giving your baby a bigger bum. That actually scared me a bit; I thought I would hate it. But I got used to it really fast, and I just use larger clothes to accommodate the diapers. Et voilà! As a convert who initially had absolutely no intention of using cloth diapers and who had never met anyone who did before I got pregnant, I have to say that I love my bamboo diapers, I have not used a single disposable diaper since I left the hospital with my son, and I have absolutely no regret.
Stay tuned for the sequel…