Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Crazy Or Creative? Climate Change Solutions

I guess when it comes to climate change, maybe it is time to really put our heads together and think outside the box...

3 Creative Climate Change Solutions

1) Paint Your Roof White: Did you ever think that maybe your next step in your climate change awareness would be to crawl up onto the top of your house to paint your roof white? Or maybe to get your whole neighbourhood together on a big white roof painting party? Well, interestingly enough if everyone on the planet painted their roofs white it is believed by scientists that the global temperature would drop back down to the level that it was 100 years back. I guess we better grab our paintbrushes and the low VOC paint

2) Plant Shiny Trees: If you are not up for the painting challenge, perhaps you would prefer to plant some shiny trees in the front yard! Another proposal to cut down the absorption of heat on the planet and to repel the sunshine back up to space. Genetically engineered shiny trees. Decorate the front yard for the holidays, all year long. Apparently Dolly and the quest for square watermelons was only the beginning of genetic engineering feats. More research on this should be out soon but apparently they already have soy crops that are more reflective.

3) Wrap Up Antarctica in a Blanket: Well if we can't slow down all of the CO2's we are putting in the air, we are just not up for switching to electric cars and decreasing our pollution...scientists may have come up with a way to save us after all. Covering up entire glaciers with blankets...well giant sheets of a material - Ice Protector - that can surround the glaciers and protect them from the heat. A new form of sunscreen as they say. Keeps in the cold, deflects off the heat and slows down all that melting and cracking that is going on. Clever, but at $12 million per square mile we might have to save a lot of our pennies to make that idea fly.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Global Warming - Personal Road Map

We all wonder what we can do about global warming.

Here is an easy to read, fun little map that offers some choices to help us to change our habits to a more green consciousness.

Lots of ideas here from using energy efficient bulbs, green power, natural cloth bags, recycling, and just plain learning about our environmental impact and making a difference.

We need to see now that we can all make an impact and that all of our decisions play a role on the environment.

Ask yourself the question. What can I do?

http://media.learningfundamentals.com.au/combating-global-warming-map.jpg

Plastic Flowers in Africa - The War On Plastic Bags.


Have you ever taken a look past all the plastic clogging your household to see what is happening in other countries?

Take Africa for example.

The amount of plastic proliferating the landscape is starting to be refered to as "plastic flowers." That the beauty of flowering plants we all covet is now reduced to the reality of coloured plastic bags floating in the hot breezes and clinging to fences, trees and grasses. Now that is sad.

read more | digg story

Monday, April 7, 2008

Recycled Plastic & Your Home

Here you go. A handy little reference list. All of that common plastic sitting around in your house....AND how all that stuff can be recycled...

In Canada, 44 per cent of the population (that is a total of almost 14 million people) currently have access to plastic bag recycling through programs, drop-off depots, or at-store bag take-back programs. That is a lot of us that can make sure we are recycling.

Your home: plastic forks, knives and spoons, meat packing
Recycled Into: CD Cases, office supplies

Your home: plastic pop bottles, juice bottles, jars of peanut butter
Recyled Into: carpet backing, pillow stuffing, some sweatshirt material

Your home: plastic Milk jugs, shampoo and conditioner bottles, body wash bottles
Recyled Into: More bottles! Recycled plastic bottles, plastic lumber

Your home: Plastic Bottle tops (most are recyclable)
Recyled Into: industrial packing cases and ice scrapers (for those of us who live in those areas where winter means ice and snow on the windshield)

Your home: Plastic water bottles, film for wrapping up your meat products
Recyled Into: Plastic insulation for cables and drain pipes

Your home: Plastic bread bags, bagel bags, white grocery bags, coloured plastic bags
Recyled Into: Plastic lumber and compost bins (now that is good for the environment!) alive.com

In Victoria, municipality recycling programs do not seem to be in place...yet. But stores like London Drugs, Safeway, Save On and Thrifty Foods have recycling programs and you can take your plastic bags there...It's a good start. (www.myplasticbags.ca)

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Be Plastic Savvy

Plastic is nothing short of an amazing invention. One that has added nothing but convenience and cost savings to our lives. We have been quite content in our plastic filled worlds until just recently….Talking on our phones, eating our strawberry yogurt, brushing our teeth, feeding the baby, making a Tupperware lunch complete with Ziploc baggies and our invincible plastic water bottle for the gym. We use it for everything….and now, we are starting to hear more and more about plastic chemicals leaching into our water and our food, filling us up with estrogen and decorating endless landfills and the landscapes of Africa. Should we be concerned? What do we need to know? And what can we do?

What do we know about Plastic?

We use plastic: For almost everything – Food, drinks, plastic knives and forks, kid’s toys, peanut butter jars, yogurt containers, baby bottles, sippy cups, plastic bowls, margarine containers, pop bottles, water bottles, Tupperware, milk jugs, ziploc bags and the cleaning products under the sink…the list is endless.

Why do we use plastic?

It is practical and doesn’t break – glass and ceramic dishes do not travel well and not great with kids around.
Keeps in
freshness and flavor – we use it to store our leftovers, and the food for our lunches. It is Tupperware and Ziploc bags.
It is leak proof, child resistant and it’s "safe"
for holding in harmful household chemicals like bleach and other toxic cleaners.

Benefits: The benefits cannot be matched by any other product on the planet – according to the Society of Plastics Industry (SPI) - the strengths they say: Light, strong, inexpensive, easily formed and shaped, works to prevent contamination (i.e. great in sterile hospital settings)…The SPI wouldn’t be biased thought, would they?

What is plastic really? The short version. It is a product that is created from “hydrocarbons” – combo of hydrogen and carbon – found primarily in crude oil (There it is again…oil…the endless topic of conversation). Small molecules a.k.a “monomers” are bonded together into chains called polymers which make up plastic. And for different types of plastics you just have to bond together different kinds of monomers. Each monomer is different and some will create more soft and pliable plastic, while others are more hard and durable. So that is the brief basics of what and how plastic is created.

Plastic Problem: The bottom line to all of this plastic use?

We are loading up the planet with toxic chemicals. Lots of them. Continually. The serious consequences of this are not even known yet, but it definitely has Lisa Gue worried. She works at the David Suzuki Foundation as an environmental health policy analyst and is now questioning what we “do not know” about the consequences of all of this plastic use on the health of people and the planet. By discarding all of this plastic, the chemicals contained in the plastics are getting into the environment. And these chemicals are building up within our bodies, our environment and the earth.

The SPI takes another stand on this issue, of course, and indicates that only 9% of waste in landfills is plastic. It is a low cost alternative and environmentally friendly as they do not take up as much space in landfills as paper bags would, and they don’t product toxic fumes when they are burned. The SPI might have a point here, but do we really need to be using this much plastic, and more importantly, is it safe?

Safe?

The impact of plastics on health and the current high spread use is a growing concern. Recent studies have determined that plastic chemicals are leaching into our food. A chemical called bisphenol A is used in certain hard plastics – like those reusable plastic bottles you take to the gym, the baby bottles and sippy cups we are all so fond of. This is leaking out into our food…and it mimics the hormone estrogen and disrupts reproductive functions (as explained by Lisa Gue). Bisphenol A has been linked to miscarriages, birth defects and prostate cancer in some studies.

Though Health Canada states that these products contain only a low level of BPA and do not pose any health risk. It still sounds pretty scary, doesn’t it? It is certainly making me think about switching to glass milk bottles, using cloth grocery bags and reusing glass Tupperware.

Want More Info?
Cpia.ca/epic – Plastics Recycling Info for Canada
myplasticbags.ca – List of local places to recycle your plastic bags

Friday, April 4, 2008

ZENN Cars - Almost in Canada!

ZE-RO EMISSIONS. NO NOISE.
Earth's Favorite Car.


Yes, that is right. These 100% Electric cars not only give off NO emissions, they are completely silent and Made In Canada!
Designed for short trips, neighborhood shopping and saving the environment. And they are just so damn cute.

Take a peek at the website: http://www.zenncars.com/. You can build your own, read up on the history Feel Good Cars Inc., check out media releases and the Rick Mercer report as well as just plain being impressed with this amazing achievement. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M88k6Ipp3c&eurl=zenncars.com/)

The STRANGE thing is that these are NOT available in Canada to purchase...yet. The cars are manufactured in Quebec and then shipped to purchasers in the United States.

Hopefully - cross your fingers - that is all changing. It looks like (with a little more government pushing and shoving) shipments will be coming into British Columbia soon!
It is being left up to the provinces of Canada whether they are allowed or not. By June 1st, licensing of the ZENN cars will be available in BC. The Ministry of Transportation seems to be holding things up - Call Jeff Knight at 205-356-7707 if you want to kick-start something.

More info about the new and improved ZENN electric car - besides being silent, environmentally-friendly AND fun to drive around....

The mileage? 245 MPG! Now how does that sound!?
100% Electric!
The speed and power? The ZENN car
goes 35 mph and ramps up to that speed in a flash. Also climbs hills just like any other car!
The range?
It ranges up to 40 miles and takes 6-8 hours to charge up.
The cost?
In BC - $18,000 plus freight to BC and taxes if applicable.
The recharge?
The cost to recharge the car is about $1.00. Pretty awesome huh?

Definitely want to have CAA with one of these...rest assured a lot of people are going to lock their keys in the car once they hop in one of these silent epiphanies.

Gentle Earth Products

Canadian owned and operated, Gentle Earth offers a complete line of all natural, environmentally-friendly products for the health of your body, your home, and the environment. Three distinct lines of "green" products represent the ultimate in Home Care, Body Care and Health Care.
As part of the Home Care line, Gentle Earth Products Ltd. is best known for having the world's finest microfiber, imported directly from Austria. The best on the market, European microfiber provides a technologically advanced cleaning system with the use of ONLY water.

We are very excited to introduce to you our entire Gentle Earth line of products which are of the highest quality and are aimed to protect your families’ health and the Environment. As home health care experts, it is a natural fit to offer these products to your family so we can eliminate most toxins from the home.


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