Greening the WC

 
Last year, we began to try to buy toilet paper and paper towels that were made only from recycled paper. (I know, I know, we shouldn’t use paper towels. I’m working on it!!)
According to Greenpeace Canada, if each household in Canada replaced 1 roll of virgin toilet paper with just one roll of recycled toilet paper, [...]

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Just popping in a for a snack

This would be one of the many squirrels that has discovered the buffet at our backyard compost bin. Hard to see the bins, buried under the 26cm of snow that fell here on Saturday night.

But what hungry squirrel would let 26cm of snow keep them from a tasty snack? Not this one, who dug a [...]

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Litterless lunch

Ever since our family did a one-week garbage-free experiment last summer, I’ve been trying to keep our kids’ packed lunches and snacks as litterless as possible. The average Canadian kid’s lunch (like the one pictured above) is estimated to create about 30 kg of waste each year. I’d been at the kids’ schools at lunch and [...]

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The worms came crawling, one by one, hurrah

For the first time since we got our outdoor compost bins, we are adding green waste like fruit and vegetable peels to it all winter long. It has kept the family of squirrels living in the maple tree in our back yard very happy as they have everything from canteloupe rinds to avocado skins to munch on in the cold dead of [...]

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As the worm turns

A few years ago when we lived in a lovely upper duplex with beautiful mouldings, hardwood floors and a delicious claw-foot bathtub but no back yard, we had a worm composting box in our kitchen. All winter long we fed those red wigglers our coffee grounds, shredded newspaper and kitchen scraps. And they ate like pigs, [...]

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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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Kicking the garbage habit – one day at a time

In Saturday’s Montreal Gazette, as part of a series of year-end vignettes by reporters, I wrote this piece:
Monique Beaudin
The wind whipped snow around our backyard, turning snowflakes into skin-stinging pellets. Bundled up against another winter storm, I trudged through thigh-high drifts to our compost bin.
The habits learned during a week of cutting our family’s [...]

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Trudging through the snow

When we decided to try to go greener for 2008, one of the things I knew we’d have to keep doing was composting during the winter. This is the first winter we’ve tried to keep the compost bin in use. Usually by the time there is this much snow on the ground, I throw in [...]

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