Doing the carbon two-step

Now that we’ve been thinking greener for a while, I thought it would be interesting to find out what kind of an impact our lifestyle has on the planet. Using a carbon footprint calculator, I plugged in all sorts of information about our family from the number of kilowatt hours of electricity we use every year [...]

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Waste not, want not

Want to leave a legacy your family will never, ever forget?
How about letting the funeral home that cremates your body use the heat from burning you up to heat the room where your funeral is being held? That’s what a funeral director in England is proposing to his customers.  “It is a generous gesture,” he says.
You [...]

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Vegging out

 We’ve toyed with vegetarianism over the years. Sick of meat, we launch into delicious veggies, legumes, tofu,  eggs and even texturized vegetable protein for a few weeks. But we always slide back into meat eating, either with a hamburger or some crispy slabs of bacon. Or a big juicy steak from The Keg.
Our flip-flopping on food was [...]

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One step forward, two steps back

Our quest to leave our car in the driveway to reduce our family’s contribution to climate change continues.
I’ve learned it takes excellent organizational abilities, superior time-management capabilities and the skills of a cultural animator to persuade some people in my family that taking a wagon, or God forbid, walking, is a fun way to get where [...]

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It’s like the 1990s, all over again

Remember waaaay back in the early 1990s?
Brian Mulroney was still the Prime Minister, the Northern Pikes were all over MuchMusic (remember She Ain’t Pretty?), and the environment was hot, hot, hot. But in a good way, not a climate-change-is-warming-the-planet kind of way.
It seems our love of things retro has brought the environment back as a [...]

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Slowly rising to the challenge

As part of our family’s quest for a greener lifestyle, I’ve been baking a lot of bread.  Like most people, we love our carbs, but I don’t really like the long list of ingredients on the whole-grain breads we’ve been buying at the supermarket. Sodium Stearoyl-2-lactylate anyone?
We have a bread machine, which takes a lot [...]

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Stylish and practical

The city of Montreal has chosen a new recycling tool to help people who live in apartment buildings recycle better. The new reusable bins have handles, close at the top and are apparently easier to carry up and down stairs than the current green bins.
 You can read a story about the new bins here .

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La la la la, lice

Just in case you haven’t heard enough about our Christmas holiday lice outbreak, you can read a the story I wrote about it for the Montreal Gazette here. There’s also a sidebar lice primer and an audio lice check.
I do not want to use that insecticide shampoo ever again so I’ve got a few tried-and-true non-toxic [...]

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I love my green TV

 
I caught a couple of very entertaining green shows on HGTV last weekend. Both – Eco House Challenge and No Waste Like Home – are about families trying to live in a more environmentally aware way.
Eco House Challenge pits two Australian families against each other to see who can be the greenest, and the results are hilarious. It kicks off with each [...]

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Oh, the guilt

Our worst offending anti-Earth behaviour must be driving our minivan. With five people in the family, it’s a handy way to get from here to there. Still, you can’t argue that it’s environmentally friendly.
My husband was kind enough to remind me of the damage our driving does after a recent shopping trip to the West Island. [...]

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