Filed under: food, green, organic, parenting, sustainable | Tags: candy, china, eco, green, halloween, holiday, organic, plastic, styrofoam, sustainable, treat, trick
In the interest of full disclosure, I have to tell you that I actually wrote the majority of this post last year. And not that I’m so brilliant or anything, but I wanted to run it again to highlight the fact that despite a bout of Buddhist soul-searching in order to instill some semblance of self-realization upon my children, their materialistic yearnings are in full swing, yet again, this Halloween.
In fact, not much has changed chez nous this year: The $7 Mona Lisa’s skeleton portrait, purchased from the Chinese crap factory otherwise known as Party City, hangs on the door in an effort to thwart my kids’ relentless requests for a styrofoam graveyard on the (ec0)lawn. We grew three gorgeous pumpkins in the garden this summer, which are just waiting to be carved. And despite the fact that I’ve been hoarding cardboard in anticipation of designing some truly terrifying gravestones, last night they told me anything homemade wouldn’t be scary enough.
Sigh.
Yes, Halloween has truly evolved from what I knew as a kid: Kleenex ghosts hung with thread in the window, a few hand-carved pumpkins on the porch, a pillowcase to carry the loot and a ghost costume made from a sheet over my head. (A sheet with the over-the-head part colored yellow made me an fried egg one year. The visual still makes me cringe.)
Today I get guilt from my kids every time we exit or enter the house. Why don’t we have cobwebs. Why can’t we get a tombstone. Why nothing screams or sighs when you pass through our front door.I’ve tried to explain that we’re trying not to buy so much plastic. I’ve tried to explain that plastic is made from oil, and oil is non-renewable, causes pollution and wars (not necessarily in that order) and that it never, ever goes away, it just breaks into tiny little pieces that swirl in the middle of the ocean. My in-laws even made bat cut-outs for the windows.
All they want is a $49.99 screaming ghost hanging in our entry way. Oh, and candy, did I mention the candy?
Far be it from me to deny my kids a little Halloween candy. But it’s with a wince that I witness the bags stacked high in the supermarkets, filled with candy that’s made with (un)fair trade chocolate, artificial food colorings that have been linked to hyperactivity and ADD, and high fructose corn syrup, which health experts say alters the way our metabolic-regulating hormones function and basically tricks our bodies into wanting to eat more and more of it. (Ergo the post trick-or-treating gluttony.)
Last year, I sourced candy free of petrochemically derived artificial colors and flavors, and not made in China (whose melanin-tainted milk chocolate gave us quite a scare). I found indie packs of USDA certified organic cotton candy made from evaporated cane juice, single-serving bags of organic gummy worms, individually-wrapped organic hard candies and yummy bubblegum made from a natural chicle gum base sustainably harvested in Central American rain forests, rather than the synthetic plastic that’s in conventional gum. (Thinking twice about handing out Hubba Bubba?)
That didn’t stop my kids from bringing home bulging bags of chemically-enhanced candy, which they ate in gluttonous frenzy until they made themselves sick.
This year, I might just shut off the lights and hide. Although the sight of the Barnacle (read: baby) done up like a kitty-cat might be worth staying up for. I think I’ll leave the lights on. Keep the bats in the windows. And hand out organic pretzels.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: beauty, california, carbon footprint, clean, eco, eco-friendly, environment, environmental, fashion, global warming, green, greener, kids, los angeles, mom, mommy, organic, parenting, sustainable, teens, tweens
I had the recent honor of speaking on a panel at the Teens Turning Green Summit this weekend. I was so incredibly, ridiculously, tear-jerkingly, awesomely inspired by the 200 women—many of them teens and tweens—who gathered in Marin, CA to talk about environmental awareness.
Now my kids are a little young to appreciate the value of a bunch of girls kissing a petition to legislate for lead-free lipstick. My son is 10 and lipstick, to him, is ludicrous; my daughter is seven and I’m trying to limit her to petro-free lip balm. The Barnacle (read: baby) just thinks it’s food.
But the whole experience made me think of my niece, an amazing Gen Y-er whom I watched come into the world and who is on the tail end of “tween,” the generation of eight-to-12-year-olds who are 20 million strong today and projected to hit 23 million by 2020, according to the U.S. Census. With 10-year-old Malia and eight-year-old Sasha Obama currently our Washington tweens-in-residence, all eyes are upon this potentially powerful group—especially beauty marketers.
Being naturally gorgeous herself (and no, it’s not just me who thinks so), C, as we’ll call my niece (because she’d kill me if I used her full name), has not yet begun to rely on the pancake-base-powder-blush-eyeliner-mascara-lip-gloss makeup routine that many teenagers turn to each morning, “putting on their faces” in a way that I haven’t seen since my grandmother refused to leave the house without her blue eye shadow.
But C has developed a serious penchant for perfume. Not just any perfume, but the heavy, yummy-sweet stuff that you can only get from synthetic fragrances. Now this totally makes sense, as these are the scents that are marketed to her in the stores where she shops (Forever 21, Claire’s, the Gap), the magazines and books that she reads (all currently related to “Twilight”), the websites she frequents (see previous), and the television and movies she watches (Disney, Nick, and the aforementioned vampires).
Remember Edward’s obsession with Bella’s scent? That’s the objective. Minus the blood.
The marketing experts who work with these companies to sell perfume to teens and tweens prey on two factors: first, that these girls are incredibly insecure about how they smell as their body chemistries shift and change, and second, the fact that, to them, makeup is typically verboten, while fragrance is an acceptable step towards womanhood that won’t raise eyebrows among their Gen X parents.
Perfume is just the tip of the iceberg. Once makeup is in the approved category, teen girls typically use more personal care products than women—an average of 17 as opposed to 12—because they’re experimenting with what they do and don’t like. And because they’re on limited budgets, typically these products are the least inexpensive in the category—think Bonnie Bell, Wet ‘n Wild, Maybelline. Unfortunately, these cheap products are manufactured from the cheapest chemical ingredients.
In fact, the Environmental Working Group found that most American girls typically have 13 different hormone-altering chemicals in their bodies at any given time. Overwhelmingly, tests of a small sample of girls detected paraben preservatives—typically “methylparaben” and “propylparaben”—in their blood and urine. Parabens have been linked to an increase in prostate and breast cancer, genital abnormalities in male babies, a decline in semen quality in men and early onset of puberty in girls.
They’re also in perfume.
The EWG’s study used a small sample group—only 20 girls. Obviously tests need to be done on a larger scale. But bigger studies have linked these chemicals to cancer and hormone disruption—both problems that have spiked in children in recent years. Childhood cancer rates are up 30% in the last 30 years, according to the Progressive Policy Institute. Girls today are menstruating as early as eight. And scientists like New York doctor Frank Lipman are starting to look at the links between health risks and chemicals in personal care products. Although each product might have a low level of potentially dangerous chemicals, the 17 mixed together can pack a potent toxic punch.
How is it possible that beauty companies manufacturing teen products create them with ingredients that have been linked to serious health problems–even cancer? Because–newsflash–the beauty industry is unregulated:
• Companies are not required to test products or ingredients for safety before they’re sold, manufacturers can use whatever chemicals they want in their products, and are not required to disclose their ingredients.
• The Toxic Substances Control Act was passed over 30 years ago and takes as its premise that chemicals are safe until they have been proven unsafe.
• A recent article (from which I “borrowed” the frightening picture above),reports that the industry-funded panel of scientists that make up the self-policing Cosmetic Ingredient Review has looked at only 11% of all ingredients in cosmetic products, and has ignored studies linking ingredients to cancer, birth defects and hormonal disruption.
It’s hard to prove an ingredient is unsafe when your review board is paid by the companies that use it.
Other countries are a little better at regulating. The EU outlawed dibutyl phthalate in nail polish because it causes birth defects; in response, one American manufacturer who shall remain nameless produced a version for American distribution in the same factory as a DBP-free version destined for the European market, rather than making one that’s safer for all. And last month, Canada banned lead in lipstick, something the Teens Turning Green group is advocating for in the U.S. with the clever “kiss a petition” campaign.
Now teenagers aren’t known for worrying about safety. They’re just trying to get through the day without too much anxiety about fitting in. And much of that fitting in involves identifying with their peers—through makeup and fragrance.
But as my niece’s perfume affinity increases, so have her frequent headaches. And although I’ve avoided getting all heavy on her with talk about cancer and early onset menstruation, I did gently suggest that she might consider cold-turkeying her perfume habit in an effort to ascertain if the synthetic perfumes might be contributing to a fragrance allergy manifesting itself in headaches.
She just as politely ignored me.
So my activism on behalf of C has taken another turn. I’m sending her a full set of Teens Going Green chemical-free beauty products for her birthday this year. I’m founding the Los Angeles chapter of the organization this spring. And the next time a petition makes it to New Orleans, I’m going to send her some lead-free lipstick to kiss it with.
Because there’s no reason why she should be hurt by an industry that cares more about her money than her welfare. And the only way to convince her otherwise is to show her that products which don’t contain chemicals work just as well.
Now if Teens Turning Green would just come out with a perfume.
Filed under: eco-friendly, fashion, organic, parenting | Tags: california, carbon footprint, clothes, clothing, eco, eco-friendly, environment, environmental, fashion, global warming, green, greener, hemp, landfill, leather, los angeles, mommy, organic, PVC, recycled, recycling, sustainable
Window shop or just plain rack 'em up: You decide.
I’ve always been a pretty sustainably-minded person. My father is a professor at UCLA whose specialty is Native American literature; I grew up going to pow-wows and taking cross-country trips to the Badlands. My nickname in college was, embarrassingly, “Flower.”
But, like most of us, my eco-focus stopped at water conservation and recycling. I bought conventional cleaning products because that’s what I was used to—even though I saw the “natural” cleaners on the same shelf, I wrote their claims off as marketing rather than turning over the bottles and comparing the labels.
I didn’t really make the connection between the environmental impact of how I lived until I met Christopher Gavigan at Healthy Child, Healthy World. I was nine months pregnant with my third child, and we met to talk about my helping with publicity and marketing efforts for the organization once the baby was born.
We sat in his no-VOC painted office filled with oxygen-emitting plants and as he explained to me what his mission and focus was I basically had a panic attack. We talked about lead and VOCs in paint, furniture and carpets; I was in the process of remodeling my house and had been living and working as the workmen stripped old paint and installed new carpets. He told me about pesticides and how they work their way up the food chain; I vowed to eat less meat and make it organic, and to buy locally produced food as much as possible.
I went home and got rid of all my chemical cleaning products after learning how much they contributed to indoor air pollution. When my baby was born, I took Christopher’s advice and used BPH-free bottles (after breast feeding first, of course). With the other two babies I had used disposable diapers; with this one I alternated between cloth, flushable inserts and chlorine-free disposables in a pinch.
I started doing my own research. And I quickly realized how much of an impact what I bought for myself and my family could have on the environment—and the marketplace. For example, most clothing is made of cotton, which is one of the most heavily sprayed crops in the world, accounting for 25 percent of all pesticides used in the U.S. according to the Sustainable Cotton Project. It takes an astounding one-third of a pound of pesticide to make one t-shirt and two-thirds to make a pair of jeans. (Dump a pound of flour into a bowl and keep that visual in mind the next time you go shopping.)
Let’s say one manufacturer makes the decision to buy conventional cotton, and a second manufacturer decides to make a similar t-shirt in organic cotton. They make the shirts, and put them side-by-side in a store. Now if everyone in that store has made the decision to not buy conventional cotton t-shirts but buy organic cotton instead, that regular cotton t-shirt will go unsold and the other will sell out. The next time the first manufacturer goes to make his shirts, hopefully he’ll choose organic cotton. The organic cotton farmer will have more business. There will be more competition in organic cotton and the price will go down. And so on.
This analogy could be applied to food, makeup, furniture, clothing, cars—I was astounded at how simple and easy it was for me to think outside of the conventional box when it came to shopping. Just putting a fresh perspective on it also helped me look closer at whether I truly needed something, or just wanted it. When I did end up in a shopping situation, I looked at labels and origin and typically ended up putting back on the rack what I might in the past have purchased.
Has going green helped reduce your shopping habit? Tell me about it!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bump, california, carbon footprint, children, eco, eco-friendly, environment, global warming, green, greener, infants, kids, los angeles, mommy, organic, parenting, parents, pregnancy, pregnant, sustainable
Yup, that's me, organically pregnant with number three!
I remember the first time I was pregnant. I read “What to Expect” cover to cover by the end of my first trimester, followed their diet to the letter—and gained 50 pounds. But while I was strategically eating two eggs a day when the book said my son’s brain was developing, I wasn’t thinking about what I was ingesting along with all that extra food: chemicals.
Here’s a scary fact: In 2005, the Environmental Working Group found that the average infant is born with 200 chemicals and pollutants in his or her blood. Some chemicals are things that are difficult to avoid, such as the flame-retardants and preservatives on wood, carpet and furniture. But many are pesticides and insecticides that are sprayed on foods as they’re grown or processed.
And here’s the good news: According to Healthy Child, Healthy World, a national non-profit devoted to children’s environmental health, you can lower your pesticide exposure by 90 percent simply by avoiding the top 12 most contaminated vegetables. (Drum roll, please.) Here are the worst offenders, in ABC order: Apples, Bell Peppers, Celery, Cherries, Grapes, Lettuce, Nectarines, Peaches, Pears, Potatoes, Spinach and Strawberries.
If you’re anything like me, you’ll drink more milk during your pregnancy than you did when you were in kindergarten. But remember that non-organic milk comes from cows that typically have been injected with recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) to boost their milk output. As this hormone has also been linked to cancer, you might want to think about going organic with your milk and milk products.
Crave protein? (I was a burger addict.) Conventional meat production includes giving the animals hormones to bulk them up, antibiotics to fight infection and pesticides in their feed. Try to buy organic, or better yet, think about organic vegetarian options: According to The Global Warming Handbook, one pound of meat requires eight times as much energy to produce as one pound of veggie protein like tofu.
Think the “Big O” is more expensive? Think again. I broke down the average kids’ lunchbox for for “Hollywood Green” and found that the organic version was actually less expensive than the conventional! (By pennies, but still.) Save even more by planting an organic garden or window box for those veggies that you eat most. This makes so much sense considering organic tomatoes can be five dollar a bag–the same price as enough seeds to grow organic tomatoes for an entire season.
If you can’t afford to go all-out, choose wisely by buying organic milk, meat and the fruits and veggies on the “dirty dozen” list. Happy bumping!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: blue bin, california, carbon footprint, children, eco, eco-friendly, environment, environmental, glass, global warming, green, greener, infants, kids, landfill, los angeles, metal, mommy, organic, paper, parenting, parents, plastic, recycled, recycling, sustainable, trash, waste
Do you want these hanging around for the next 700 years?
Despite the fact that we’ve successfully brought our recyling-to-trash ratio down two-to-one, with my husband proudly lugging the bulging blue bin down to the street on Tuesdays while I tag behind with the veritably anorexic black trash can, I have the sinking suspicion that not everything I’m throwing in the recycling can is, in fact, recyclable.
My view towards separating trash has up until now been pretty black or white. Is it plastic, metal, glass or paper? Toss it in the blue bin. Is it vegetable or plant? Compost it. Everything else gets trashed.
The foil yogurt top? Recycling. The empty shampoo container? Crumpled up wax paper sandwich bags, plastic shopping bags, empty soy milk Tetrapaks, water bottles (with tops), the plastic wrap on my mother-in-law’s famous cranberry relish? Blue bin, baby.
And despite the fact that the recycling market tanked in tandem with the economy, with cardboard that sold for $135 a ton in September now going for $35 a ton, plastic bottles from $.25 to $.2 a pound, and aluminum cans from $.80 to $40 a pound, according to the Associated Press, until Los Angeles County suspends our recycling program because they’ve got no where to sell this stuff, I’m still at it.
A few weeks ago, I lugged home the empty plastic water bottles from my son’s soccer games to recycle them. I see empty soda bottles in public trash cans and wish that I had a bag. I fear I’m becoming a wee bit obsessed.
But I have issues: What if those items I’m so painstakingly rinsing out and saving for the bin don’t actually qualify as recyclables? What if I’m just delaying their final journey to the landfill? And what if by sending non-recyclables to the recycling plant, I’m actually costing the workers there time (and, by extension, money in the form of my tax dollars) by making them weed the stuff out?
So I checked in with Earth911.com, which provided the lovely crumpled plastic bottle photo pictured above, and is my go-to source for facts like:
- Eight out of 10 plastic water bottles end up in the landfill, where they don’t even start breaking down for 700 years.
- Nail polish is considered hazardous waste, and should never be thrown in the trash.
- Cell phones, computers and televisions can be recycled.
- As of last month, the city of San Diego recycles surfboards. Dude!
I was determined to search Earth911 to determine exactly what goes where.
Right off the bat, they made it easy. I typed in “aluminum foil” and my zip code and found that, yes indeed-y, my yogurt top belongs in the blue bin. Same for the empty shampoo bottle, since it’s got a “2″ on the bottom, meaning it’s HDPE clear plastic. And ditto for those wax paper bags and bottles (I need to take the caps off, since they’re different kinds of plastic).
The Tetrapak is another case entirely. Can’t be recycled. End of story. (And of my purchasing.)
But those plastic shopping bags and plastic wrap? Apparently, I should be taking that stuff to the supermarket recycling bin, since they’re light enough to fly around and clog up the curbside recycling equipment. Thank god I’ve always got an Envirosax in my purse.
Are you as obsessed as I am with recycling? Check out this awesome video that breaks down (pun intended) how a recycling facility works and let me know what you think.
Yes I am a trash geek.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: acne, beautiful, beauty, california, carbon footprint, children, eco, eco-friendly, environment, environmental, global warming, green, greener, hair spray, infants, kids, los angeles, lotion, makeup, mascara, mineral, mom, mommy, nail polish, organic, parenting, parents, sustainable, teens
And so it begins. We’d barely taken the sweet potatoes off the table before it was time to head out to the farm to cut down our tree. (We can debate the eco-friendliness of this practice until the end of time: My kids would disown me if I outlawed the Tannenbaum.)
But between cutting out recycled newspaper-comic snowflakes for our windows and explaining to the Barnacle (read: baby) that glass ornaments really aren’t that good to eat, there wasn’t a lot of “me time” in the mix.
By this morning when I got the kids off to school, I was feeling–and looking–pretty haggard. Where was my shine! My sparkle! That come-hither glance that got me into the three-kid business in the first place?
Apparently it’s contained in a few jars and tubes in a bathroom cabinet that I should visit more regularly. So I made a pre-New Year’s resolution. This holiday season, I’m taking “me time” for these beauty essentials.
1. Josie Maran Cosmetics mascara
I chopped onions, watched “Beaches” and just about broke up with my husband trying to get this mascara to run while I cried. It’s super thick and luxurious but really doesn’t budge or flake! Eco-reason to try: paraben, petrochemical and synthetic-fragrance free, no animal testing, formulated with jojoba and argan oil and the packaging is recyclable. Did you know some mascaras still contain mercury, a known bio-hazard? Test it: Wearing clean mascara on one eye and synthetic on the other, chop onions while wearing mascara to see which runs first.
2. Intelligent Nutrients Hair Spray
This hair spray is so safe that you can drink it—and I have. But it works amazingly, totally holding your style without stiffness. Eco-reason to try: paraben, petrochemical and synthetic-fragrance free, no animal testing, vegan, food-grade, organic ingredients like aloe and lavender essential oil. Did you know that some hair sprays state on their labels that the product can be fatal if inhaled? Test it: Curl your hair on one side with regular hair spray and on the other with chemical free, then drink a shot of hair spray and call me in the morning. Kidding!
3. La Bella Donna Compressed Mineral Foundation
I love minerals because they provide even coverage but don’t clog pores, and they offer built-in, natural sunscreen protection. Loose powder makes a mess, but this compact is absolutely perfect! Swirl your brush around to coat it, then brush it all over your face for the most even coverage and no chance of getting powder all over your bathroom. Eco-reason to try: paraben, petrochemical and synthetic-fragrance free, no animal testing, including titanium dioxide and zinc oxide. Did you know that many mainstream companies that claim to produce mineral makeups are, in fact, filling their products with a whole host of other ingredients including chemicals? True minerals adhere to the surface of your skin; they don’t penetrate into the pores. Test it: Sprinkle your loose mineral makeup on the top of a glass of water. If it’s pure minerals, the substance will float on the surface of the water; it there are fillers, they’ll sink. Now put your finger in the water and wait a few minutes. If the substance clings to your finger, it’s pure minerals; if they disappear, they’re not.
4. SpaRitual Nail Polish
Manufactured without formaldehyde, touluene and DBP—three known carcinogens—this polish stays on as long as any other brand. Did you know that DBP is actually banned in Europe because it’s been linked to birth defects? Test it: Polish one hand with “big 3” free and the other with conventional polish, then wash dishes to see which chips first.
5. Liz Earle Cleanse & Polish Hot Cloth Cleanser
It’s like getting a facial twice a day. The cleanser is creamy and the cloth is the perfect texture to get into all the nooks and crannies, plus even without water you can use it to take off makeup. This is the best selling cleanser in Britain, now available stateside. Eco-reason to try: paraben, petrochemical and synthetic-fragrance free, no animal testing, formulated with chamomile and eucalyptus essential oil, in packaging made from post consumer waste plastic that is, in turn, recylable. Did you know parabens, the most common preservatives in beauty products, have been found in breast cancer tissue? Test it: Just try it! You will be amazed!
6. Verabella Kiss Zit Goodbye
Forget otc pimple creams. This little roll-on dispenses the best pimple-fighter that’s invisible both under and over makeup; it fights blemishes, kills bacteria and reduces redness without chemicals.
Eco-reason to try: paraben, petrochemical and synthetic-fragrance free, no animal testing, formulated with camphor, tea tree oil and witch hazel, in recyclable glass. Did you know that the term “fragrance” on product labels is often used to mask the presence of parabens? Test it: Roll it over makeup and watch the product–and your pimple–disappear.
7. Perfect Organics Vegan Lip and Cheek Shimmer
This is every girl’s secret weapon, small enough to stow in a pocket or clutch, but so many applications: On lips, it’s gloss, on eyes, it’s highlighter, on cheeks, it’s blush. I challenge you to find a cosmetic that delivers more! Eco-reason to try: paraben, petrochemical and synthetic-fragrance free, no animal testing, vegan, all organic ingredients including macadamia nut and argan oils. Did you know the average woman swallows four pounds of petroleum in her lifetime just from licking the lipstick on her lips? Test it: Apply on lips, cheeks and eyes for a quick glow fix!
8. The Healing Seed Body Lotion
Made with virgin organic hempseed oil, which is the most nutritious oil known to man, this lotion is incredibly hydrating but non greasy and it has the most amazing smell of warm jasmine. Did you know that despite the fact that our first flag was sewn from it, the first draft of the Declaration of Independence was written on paper made from it, both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew it and it was one of America’s founding crops, it’s still illegal to grow hemp in the United States—even though the plant contains no THC? Test it: Rub on hands, then type, like I’m doing right now.
Feeling pretty? Go light a soy candle or something!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: california, carbon footprint, children, eco, eco-friendly, environment, environmental, global warming, green, greener, heritage, infants, kids, locavore, los angeles, mom, mommy, organic, parenting, parents, sustainable, teens, thanksgiving, turkey
Cooking, cleaning—the last thing you want to think about is greening your Thanksgiving, right? But this is the perfect time to reflect and reassess your holiday preparations in terms of sustainability. With tips from how to shop your local Farmer’s Markets for your feast to finding a sexier turkey, I’ve got you covered from now ‘til leftovers.
Know Your Guests
For most families, tradition sets the precedent for who shares the Thanksgiving meal and a simple phone call can easily confirm the details. But a hand-lettered invitation (on recycled paper, of course), or even a clever Evite can set the tone for a truly special event. Whatever your mode of communication, make sure you determine any special food needs your guests might have. Are they vegan? Vegetarian? Pescatarian? Do they have food allergies? Simple questions now can save you a world of last-minute headaches.
Plan Your Meal
A simple rule of thumb for a traditional Thanksgiving meal is to include a main course, four sides and dessert. Some families add a soup at the start and a salad at the end (or vice-versa). Traditionally the main course is a turkey, but it can translate to a poached or grilled whole salmon for a pescatarian meal, or tofurky or vegetarian casserole for vegans and vegetarians. Luckily, the spread is so broad that you can easily include something for everyone.
Get A Sexy Turkey
Turkeys are indigenous to North America, but today’s turkeys are deficient in one glaring way: They can’t reproduce. They’ve been bred to produce the most meat at the least cost, and are now dependent on human intervention to fertilize their eggs. Organically grown heritage turkeys, in contrast, mate naturally, live outdoors and grow slowly. They also taste better.
Shop Smarter
500 billion to one trillion plastic bags are used every year and most end up in landfills or in the ocean where they photodegrade into tiny little pieces that disrupt aquatic ecosystems. And brown’s no better: Paper bag production demands 17 trees per ton and its production produces 50 times more water pollution than plastic. Invest in a few reusable bags; keep some in your car for groceries and one in your purse for regular shopping. You’ll be amazed how handy they can be.
Become A Loc
Most items in your supermarket travelled an average 1,000 miles to get there; becoming a “lovacore” (someone who eats locally harvested, seasonal produce) reduces transportation energy costs. Thanksgiving is a wonderful opportunity to hit up your local farmer’s market for organic, locally sourced produce. Since these traditional recipes typically rely on food that’s in season, you can pretty much find everything you need in the way of root vegetables (carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams) as well as specialty items like honey or even beeswax candles to adorn your table.
Eat Organic–Or Don’t Eat
You can lower your pesticide exposure by 90 percent simply by buying organic or avoiding altogether the top 12 vegetables that are most contaminated by pesticides and insecticides, according to the Environmental Working Group. (Drum roll, please.) Here are the worst offenders, in ABC order: Apples, Bell Peppers, Celery, Cherries, Grapes, Lettuce, Nectarines, Peaches, Pears, Potatoes, Spinach and Strawberries.
Green Clean Up
Maybe you’re doing it, maybe you have help. Either way, using non-toxic cleaners can make your house sparkle without chemicals. Run out of sink or tub scrub? Mix up some baking soda and water. Wondering how to get your windows squeaky clean? Try vinegar. These household staples really work—and you won’t run the risk of inciting a synthetic-fragrance induced allergy attack in your guests.
DIY Decorating
Think outside the box when it comes to decorating your home. Eschew the traditional wreath in favor of one made from living, organically grown succulents and cacti. Recycle old wrapping paper or the funny pages and cut them into snowflakes to put in the window or hang from thread over your table. Make your table arrangements from organic flowers, or collect bouquets from your yard or neighborhood (adding herbs like rosemary and lavender make for gorgeous, fragrant bouquets).
Give Thanks
Many families say a traditional prayer led by the head of the table before eating. Some go around the table, with each member saying what he or she is giving thanks for this year. Still others depend on pre-prepared print-outs of Thanksgiving trivia. Whatever happens at your table, make sure you’re conscious of the religious considerations of your guests.
Toss It
Scrape the plates and suds up—but wait! Is that a leek you’re tossing in the trash? Even if you don’t have a composter, you can separate the green scraps from the rest and toss them in your leaf bin. And you’re definitely recycling your plastic bottles and aluminum cans, right?
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: california, carbon footprint, children, eco, eco-friendly, environment, environmental, global warming, green, greener, infants, kids, los angeles, mom, mommy, organic, parenting, parents, sustainable, teens
Without a blackboard, my Girl Scouts Global Warming presentation on Monday consisted of me jumping around making big Earth-sized circles in the air and pointing to the Sun. Not the most effective talk I’ve ever given. But they were full of questions: How do we make greenhouse gases? (These gases occur naturally, but now we make too much through burning fossil fuels like gas to drive our cars and coal to make electricity.) Where does plastic come from? (Again with the fossil fuels.) What’s organic? (In a nutshell: Grown and produced without chemicals.)
Their questions made me realize that kids need less on the “how” and more on the “why.”
I remember as a child hating it when my dad yelled at me to turn off the lights. My kids and I now yell, “Save a polar bear!” which means the same thing. We may not always remember turn off the lights, but at least we’re making the connection between electricity, carbon emissions and the melting ice caps when we forget.
Maybe I should show them this tongue-in-cheek proposal of lifejackets for polar bears to help them remember.
Or maybe I should start giving them more real reasons for doing the things that we do. Like turning off the lights to save polar bears. Or walking when we can, instead of taking the car, because cars are the leading cause of global warming. Putting on a sweater instead of turning on the heat because we can save an estimated one-third of one ton of CO2 emissions.
Using reusable and recyclable lunch containers because most kids throw their weight’s worth of lunchtime trash (67 pounds!) into the landfill each year. And reusable bottles because plastic can leach the chemical BPA into their water, and because only eight out of 10 plastic water bottles get recycled, and because it’s made from fossil fuels, and because it never truly degrades, just breaks down into little pieces that float around in the ocean and choke the ecosystem. (Plastic water bottles are just plain evil.)
I remember during one big drought when I was a kid having to take baths in the water my cousin left in the tub, in order to conserve it. I thought my aunt was the Gestapo. Today I leave a watering can in the shower to fill up when the water’s warming, and scoop up the water after my kids’ bath to water the plants. (Don’t worry, we use biodegradeable soap.)
Do my kids think I’m an eco-Nazi? I don’t think so. Originally, I explained that the world’s clean water supply is shrinking because of pollution, and that Mommy and Daddy have to pay for every drop that fills their bath. By now, it’s just routine.
As Americans, we have a history of this conservation stuff–it’s only in the last 50 years or so that we got off track. Out of necessity, the Depression taught our grandparents about conservation. My grandmother reused aluminum foil. My grandfather recycled newspaper. I’m trying to teach my kids the lessons they taught me.
So we don’t have to break out the life jackets.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: california, carbon footprint, children, eco, eco-friendly, environment, environmental, global warming, green, greener, infants, kids, los angeles, mom, mommy, organic, parenting, parents, sustainable, teens
I’m leading the girl scout troop today and have a nifty craft planned to demonstrate the concepts of reduce, reuse and recycle involving newspaper and scissors. (Okay, it’s window snowflakes. I’m not the most creative mom in town.)
But in previewing it with my seven-year-old daughter, I realized that despite the fact that I’ve been talking about shorter showers and blue bins and shutting off lights for as long as she probably can remember, she really has no idea why we’re doing these things.
She doesn’t understand what global warming is.
Now, that’s not surprising. She has a loose idea of what time is, and if you ask her what country we live in chances are she’ll say California.
But I thought that if I could figure out a way to talk to her and her fellow Brownies about global warming, it might at least make my nagging a bit more understandable. I’d use the whiteboard, and a few colored pens. I could be the Al Gore of Girl Scouts. So here’s what I came up with:
• Energy from the sun, as light and heat, heats the Earth.
• Heat rises, and some goes back into space.
• Some is trapped by the gases in our atmosphere—carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide.
• These “greenhouse gases” are naturally occurring, but we are making more through burning things, like gas for machines and coal to make electricity. (These are called “fossil fuels” because they come from deep inside the Earth and are millions of years old.)
• The more gases we put into the atmosphere, the more heat it traps.
• As the Earth heats up, the ice at the top (Greenland) and bottom (Antarctica) melts and the oceans rise. On land, because it’s drier, water is harder to find, and it becomes harder to grow enough food to eat.
• If we do nothing, at the current rate the earth will heat up one degree by 2020. This doesn’t seem like much, but the Little Ice Age in the middle of the last millennium started with a shift of only two to four degrees.
• And because we are not doing nothing, but continue to burn more fossil fuels and forests, especially in developing countries like India and China, scientists say the temperature will increase four degrees by 2050, at the latest.
Simple enough, right? Especially with a big picture of a globe and a lot of yellow, blue and green arrows. But the main thing I’d like these girls to take away with them is the sense that they’re not powerless. That the three Rs really matter. That we can slow down global warming and clean up the Earth by paying attention to how we live our lives, and keeping track of how the things that we use are made. (More examples of that soon–I’m still working on the graphics.)
And that kids like them aren’t just waiting for adults to start doing these things, they’re starting organizations like the Green Youth Movement, founded by high school junior Ally Maize (pictured above) and Teens Turning Green.
Kind of makes you want to go back to school, doesn’t it?
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: california, carbon footprint, children, eco, eco-friendly, environment, environmental, global warming, green, greener, infants, kids, lice, los angeles, mom, mommy, organic, parenting, parents, sustainable, teens
If you have a child in school, chances are he or she will get lice at some point or another. You can be the most vigilant hair-washer on the planet, your kid could practically squeak and sparkle, but one day you’ll look over and she’ll be scratchy-scratching at her head.
I know, because two weeks ago my daughter came home with lice.
Now this is not entirely surprising. She has (had) long hair down to her waist and so thick that it took 15 minutes to brush out every morning. (Prompting a daily discussion about how kids with cancer need wigs and how much good cutting 10 inches off her mane could do and how cute she’d look with a bob, all to no avail.) And despite the tightness of my braiding, the firmness of my ponytailing and the sternness with which I lectured that she’d get lice if she didn’t keep her hair back, she always came home with it loose. Hey, if you had hair like Brooke Shields in that desert island movie, you’d probably want to let it fly, too.
But loose hair is like a highway to heaven for lice. They hop and crawl from one child’s head to another, a practice made especially easy when said child’s hair is flying around all over the place.
So she scratched. And I looked. And then I checked the Internet for photos and descriptions. Sure enough, those little yellowish dots were lice eggs. Then I freaked, remembering my sister-in-law’s 12-month battle against the things, in which she enlisted old standards like mayonnaise and petroleum jelly in an effort to avoid pesticides. Nothing worked. And taking her advice to heart, my whole mommy greenest persona went out the window as I screamed at my husband to hit the 24-hour drugstore and bring us back the biggest vat of Rid he could find.
Now if you’ve never encountered Rid before, you’re lucky. It doesn’t exactly burn, but it certainly smells like it should. And the active ingredient that kills the lice–piperonyl butoxide–is at what they call a “low hazard” for cancer and reproductive toxicity, according to the Skin Deep database (part of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, which is awesome, if you haven’t checked it out already). The report also shows a 70% data gap in testing, which may be accounted for by the fact that this stuff’s been on the market for eons and probably hasn’t been tested since our grandparents used it on our parents. This also might mean that its dangers are currently under-reported, because it sure as h*ll smells like it’s more toxic than that.
But did this knowledge of toxicity stop me from slapping the shampoo on my daughter’s scalp? Not for a New York minute. Although they are small and relatively innocuous, the idea of lice is just skin-crawlingly horrifying enough to take your eco high-and-mightiness on vacation. My head itches just writing about it.
So I vigorously shampooed my daughter, my son the EcoWarrior and the Barnacle (read: baby) with Rid. And when I checked again and saw that the shampoo hadn’t killed the lice but had, in some weird Wes-Craven-inspired parenting scenario, caused the eggs to hatch so that tiny, newborn lice were actually crawling, drunk with Rid poison, on their scalps, what did I do? I shampooed them again. Longer.
But here’s the thing about lice: Once the live ones die (and they finally did, thankfully), you have to get the eggs out. If you don’t get every single little nit and one teeny tiny bug hatches one to two weeks later it can spawn seven to 10 eggs in a day and you’re right back where you started. And that’s about two hours with the nit comb if your child has (had) a mane like my daughter’s, where you go through the hair strand by strand and pull the sticky little eggs all the way down the shaft, then drown them in vinegar before you flush ‘em. Think about doing that to 10 inches of hair all the way around.
So our session with the nit comb concluded with a visit to the hairdresser’s, where my daughter walked out with a brand new, absolutely adorable bob and I walked out with the answer to my prayers: An all-natural, pesticide-free kids’ hair care line developed to combat lice. The stuff is called Fairy Tales and it’s primarily formulated with rosemary and citronella essential oils, which are lice repellents. Then there’s a treatment mousse that utilizes enzymes to combat infestations, a daily shampoo (containing sodium laureth, yes, but it’s a far cry from piperonyl butoxide), and my absolute favorite Rosemary Repel Spray and Shield, which is this yummy, essential-oil smelling stuff that you spritz on before they go to school kind of like hair spray, and it prevents the lice from taking a ride to your kids’ scalps.
Eureka! Lice is currently all over their school but my kids are not repeat offenders.
Score one for Mommy Greenest, zero for Rid.
