Where have I gone to

Some of you may have wondered where I have gone; well, the answer is: deep into kitchen renovation. About a month ago now our plumbing gave under the sink leaving a flood in my kitchen and we decided to take this opportunity to renovate instead of just patching up a kitchen that was already in shambles.

My mom and dad are down from NB helping (thank you so much). 3 weeks into the reno, my dad is now working on getting the floor ready for my new cork floor. The walls are up and painted; same goes for the ceiling.

I wish we could have done the full kitchen eco-friendly but cost restriction and timing prohibited us from doing so. However I did consider the enviroment at many points in the kitchen reno; below are some of the decisions that we made that are in part green.

1. Cork Floor: When cork is harvested the tree is not destroyed and then replanted but rather the bark is trimmed from the tree every 9 years, leaving the tree and the forest undamaged. Its not unusual to have a 200 year old tree still producing cork bark. Cork flooring is actually made from the waste of the cork wine stopper manufacturing process so cork flooring is a recycled product.
2. Sico Go Prime Duo 100% Acrylic Latex Primer- Sealer and Undercoat: This is a great all purpose primer with less then 78.38g/L of VOC's. I knwo there are some primers out there that have 0g/L VOC however we had some primer left over from a previous project and in our time restraints could not get our hands on anything that had a lower VOC count.
   
3. Sico Paint Chamois: This is a 0g/L VOC paint; however the tint does add some VOC, the darker your paint the more VOC in it. Once again I know more eco-friendly options exist but we had all the paint we needed left over from previous projects.
   
4. I would have loved to get a LED light fixture for the kitchen but the up front cost is too much for us; instead we got a light fixture that could accomodate a compact florecent bulb. When chosing your light fixture make sure to always double check that a compact fluorescent bulb will fit, they are bigger then their incandescent conterparts.
   
5. We are reusing our existing cabinet pulls. We don't have enough to do the full kitchen so the uppers will have the old pulls reused and the lowers are going to have new pulls giving the kitchen a unique fun look.
6. An Ikea kitchen we chose Ikea for a few reasons first they are inexpensive secondly they do have a good enviromental practice. Ikea is not perfect but they do try harder then many companies out there to find out more check out : http://www.theikeaway.ca/en/home.html.

I found a great website with information on non-toxic painting if anyone is interested:
http://www.eartheasy.com/live_nontoxic_paints.htm#2d

Green Cricket

Today Eco Friendly Friday is a review of Green Cricket, an online store that offers green lifestyle and home products in the Toronto Area.

A few weeks back we made our first order with them, it was delivered to our home by Green Cricket itself in a reusable box that we are to give back at our next order. There was no shipping cost because our order was over $75 and local. The site is extra easy to use and our service was great.

We have decided to start using them regularly for a variety of items we purchase on a semi-regular basis but used to have to visit 2 or 3 store to find them all. Such as organic coffee, diapers, wipes, parchment paper, beauty products, muffin cup liners...

During our next order we plan on also picking up this extra cute car for Christophe:

Toy Thursday - Eco Books

I am a sucker for books that help teach my kids values about the environment. Last week we were at Winners and found a book called "My Bag and Me!" by Karen Farmer. It's a great board book that tells the story of a little boy going on a shopping trip with his reusable bag. The book even comes with a little reusable bag for your child.

To top it off, the book and the bag are 100% recyclable after your child destroys it :-)

I am assuming we will give it to another child in 5 years or so when our little one is done with it instead of recycling it.

This book is rapidly becoming one of our favorites.

Eco Friendly Fridays

It's been a while since I have done an Eco Friendly Friday.

Today, I am going to talk about "One Million Acts of Green", a project by the CBC, the Hour and Cisco. I think it's great when large corporations, media and famous people get involved in promoting green living.

Now for those of us that are already living an extra-green lifestyle, we don't learn much from this kind of press.  However, there are millions of people out there that still need to be convinced that our planet needs to be saved. Yes, there are actually people out there who do not recycle.

The idea behind the campaign is that one small act can make a big difference.

It’s not about overhauling your life; it’s about one act from each individual, amassing to a million. It can be as simple as switching to compact fluorescent lightbulbs, starting a recycling program, or walking to work. You can do one act – or you can do all one million! It’s up to you.

The way I look at this is if CBC and The Hour can convince even just half of Canada to commit to one act of Green we will be better off then we were yesterday.

Check out the acts of Green Completed by Me.

Earth Hour 2009

It's never to early to start planning for earth hour 2009 that will be held on March 28 at 8:30PM. What is earth hour you say it's one hour that we as a human race give a breck to our planet by shutting off all lights; if you want to take one step further you pledge to not use any for of electricity for that hour. Just as we did this year we will be participating in earth hour as a family in 2009. This is a great moment to take time to explain to your kids why the planet is so important and out energy conservation. If this is a concept your kids already know then you can take this time to bond as a family...

Toy Spotting

I am not big on giving our little guy plastic toys but once he gets older and he no longer puts everything in his mouth some plastic will be OK. So why not give him toys made from recycled plastic from Green Toys.

Junk Mail

I feel like I am always on a uphill battle trying to control the amount of paper that comes into my house. Each time we receive junk mail addressed to us we contact the sender and ask to be removed from there list.

FYI for new moms out there do not give out your address to Tyme Maternity in there contest slip. I have asked them over and over to stop mailings and on top of their mailings you will get tones of stuff from Pamper, Enfamil and Nestly. Nestly is pretty respectful when you ask to be removed from there list other then the fact they sent me 3 coupons for free formula before they did so. (giving out free formula is against the WHO) I am still working on stoping the mail


Today to help curb the amount of paper we receive and try to save a few more trees we are going to make a few no flyer signs.

Steps to make sign:

1. find a paper flyer that was only printed on one side to reuse for printing
2. select one of the following images and print
No Junk Mail
No Flyers
3. cut out the image
4. (optional) laminate the image both sides using clear mactac - this will somewhat protect it from the weather elements
5. attache to your mail box

A few articles and web sites that I found interesting on the subject:
Government of Canada
Clean Calgary
Red Dot Campaign