Summer is on it’s way!

With the recent warm weather seen across Canada, we can’t help but to think summer is on it’s way. Green Toys makes a wonderful assortment of toys that are made in the United States from recycled milk jugs. I love their toys because not only are they made of food grade plastic (BPA free, pthalate free, lead paint free) but also because they are made to last a long time. If you have seen any of their toys in person I am sure that you recognized that these toys are about as childproof as they come. Here are a few of their toys that make for great summer play.

Green Toys Tea Set
There is something magical about having an outdoor tea party. Set up a little picnic table or even toss a comfy blanket down on the grass, set out this solid tea set and let your little one’s imagination flow. This tea set includes 4 tea cups with plates, 4 spoons, teapot with lid and a sugar bowl with lid.

Green Toys Sand Play Set
While sand toys are a popular dollar store item they just don’t last and safety is a concern. If you have a sandbox or are a frequent visitor to a beach you’ll want to have a good sturdy sand set that will last year after year. The Green Toys Sand Play Sets are just that. They comes with a bucket, sandcastle mold, shovel and a rake.

Green Toys Recycling Truck
Another great pasttime is “driving” vehicles around the yard. Help your child learn the basics of recycling while having fun! This recycling truck has a moveable bed, and the rear door opens and shuts.

Green Toys Indoor Gardening Kit
While your waiting for the weather to warm up a bit more, this indoor gardening kit is a great way to welcome a bit of summer indoors early. It comes with 3 planting pots, a trowel, and 3 packs of organic seeds (Teddybear Sunflower, Basil & Zinnia).

Victoria is founder of Friendly Fish, a small Canadian company that carries a variety of Green Toys and many other eco-friendly children’s products. This online store focuses on products made right here in North America.

As omnipresent as it is today, it may be difficult to remember that bottled water was a novelty just 10-20 years ago. It was once a trendy accessory or punch line for pampered celebrities – “she demanded 10 bottles of Perrier to wash her hair with.” Now, thanks to a turn towards healthy lifestyles and aggressive marketing, bottled water has become as common and widely available as, well, tap water.

Credit: Suat Eman

With the threat of privatisation and landfills overflowing with empty plastic bottles, The Canadian Federation of Students, Polaris Institute and The Sierra Youth Coalition have teamed up to spearhead Canada’s first Bottled Water Free Day on March 11th. You are invited to take the pledge to “not drink bottled water where public water is available” and to “ditch the bottle and turn on the tap!” If you are still not convinced, here are some of the scarier facts you may not know about the bottled water industry:

o In terms of environmental impact, consider the following: for every bottle you drink, TWO bottles are used to produce it.

o According to the Pacific Institute, 17 million barrels of oil were used to produce the 31.2 billion litres of bottled water consumed in the United States.

o Between the shipping of raw materials to plants and the finished product to shelves, the industry is a HUGE contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Imagine what it takes to ship Fiji Water from Fiji or San Pellegrino from Italy…

o The energy cost of producing a plastic bottle is equal to filling ¼ of that bottle with crude oil.

o Bottled water and plastic resource companies have spent MILLIONS to fight against deposit return programs. These programs would require them to assume some of the recycling costs and of course, lessen the demand for their products.

o 10-15% of the price of a bottle of water goes to advertising costs.

o What the advertisers fail to mention in these ads is that in terms of quality, NOTHING about bottled water is different from tap water – except its cost.

o In fact, marketing campaigns have been so effective that they have contributed to a diminished confidence in public water systems and have set the ball rolling for privatisation of water services; consumers would be willing to pay more for “safer” water.

Regulation of the bottled water industry vs. regulation of tap water:

o In Canada, bottled water is considered a food product under the Food and Drugs Act and Regulations. Government oversight that exists for these regulations has not been updated since 1973.

o It is estimated that Canadian bottling plants receive, on average, one inspection every 3 to 5 years.

o There have been 29 recalls of 49 bottled water products since 2000, only five of which were made public; products were recalled due to bacterial or chemical contaminations.

o In Canada, the quality and safety of tap water is the responsibility of municipalities and provinces, though federal guidelines also apply when it comes to quantities of microbiological, chemical and radiological substances allowable in the water.

o The City of Ottawa conducts over 125,000 quality tests per year and the City of Toronto checks its water for bacteria every 4 to 6 hours.

Big business and bottled water:

o Coca Cola (Dasani) and PepsiCo (Aquafina) are two of the four “Big 4” water-bottlers (with Nestle and Danone).

o These companies actively pursue beverage exclusivity contracts in public institutions like universities and public buildings.

o School contacts are often long-term (10 years) and contain stiff conditions like quotas and enormous fees for termination.

o Free water fountains are often removed from schools while cost to operate vending machines can rise up to $175,000 per year (paid by the university).

o In Canada, 25% of bottled water sold is reprocessed tap water; most of it is sold by Coca Cola or PepsiCo.

o The bottled water industry has spent BILLIONS on marketing.

o For Coca Cola and PepsiCo, revenue for bottled water (per unit) is greater than soft drinks.

You’re convinced, now what can you do?

o Visit the site, get informed
o Take the pledge
o Keep the pledge – This isn’t just for one day, it’s a real commitment
o Inform others – Talk about it, tell even just one person or print the free advertising materials available on the website
o Get your school/business/municipality to sign up – So far, 3 universities have made the commitment to ban bottled water, as have cities from 8 provinces and 2 territories
o Also, visit Brita’s “Filter for Good” campaign and pledge to replace bottled water with reusable containers.

The bottled water industry is less regulated than municipal water systems, consumes more energy and releases more harmful toxins into the environment than tap water. If that were not enough, privatisation increases the risk of regulation of a resource that is vital to life. And if that doesn’t convince you, I don’t know what will.

This is one of my downfalls. No matter how hard I try, the number of plastic bags only seem to grow in my home. I usually have my groceries delivered and the store boxes them rather than bagging them. Nevertheless, if I pop in to the store to pick something up I inevitably realize that I don’t have a bag with me.

So this is my pledge today. I will carry one or two bags in my purse for moments like this.  Done. There they are….somewhere at the bottom of my purse, ready for action. I pledge to have few to no plastic bags in my future. I believe that they are unnecessary and wasteful.

Then there is the question of plastic containers for lunches and keeping food in the fridge or freezer.  Alternatives include metal, glass or ceramic. Although, there is no way I would put glass or ceramic in a child’s lunch pack. I already have a number of plastic containers that I have had for years including hand-me-down plastics from the grandparents. I think it would be wasteful to throw them out so I am going to replace them with metal alternatives as time goes on.

What to do about plastic wrap? I try to put my leftovers in those plastics I mentioned but every once in a while I really just want to cover something up and stick it in the fridge. I am going to buy some of these Eco-Food Covers and do away with plastic wrap forever.

As for those plastic toys, not interested. The kids rarely play with them and mostly they don’t offer an outlet for creativity. Besides there are so many alternatives to plastic toys that are natural, fun, and creative. I ask friends and relatives to skip the plastics aisle and think about active or creative games and toys. And sometimes they listen.

I am sure that I have missed some plastic in my house, but I will keep working at it. Where does plastic sneak into your life and what ideas have you come up with to stop the tsunami?

Plastic has been so innocuous in our lives, it is sometimes difficult to see where you are using it. But I think it is time to change the tide and finish using up our plastics dispose of them safely and keep them away from the land and oceans. Enough harm has been done.

We live in a country where water seems abundant. We have clean potable water available to the majority of us by simply turning on the tap. In  the rest of the world, 1.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water. Many of these 1.1 billion people would sell a kidney for potable water or give their life for a supply of potable water for their children. Why then, do we buy bottled water?

There is a perception among some people in Canada that our tap water is suspect. Look at Walkerton where 7 people died when agricultural waste leached e-coli into the water supply or at Metro Vancouver where there was a boil water advisory in November 2006 as a large storm breached the watershed.  It looks like our water may not be safe.  But, where does that bottle water come from? It comes from the same sources as our tap water does in many cases, so if our tap water is not safe how is it safe to put the same water into plastic bottles which they then sell back to us at a price per litre higher than gas.

Here are 3 good reasons to drink tap water

Cost

We complain about the price of a litre of gasoline, but are willing to pay even more for a litre of water. If gas came out of a tap in your house, would you go out and buy it in little plastic containers? If you buy one plastic bottle of water each day for a year, you are spending $547.50 per year. That is $547.60 you could put to a better use. Tap water only costs an average of $1.26 for 1000 litres in Canada, so 365 litres will cost you $0.46 plus the price of a reusable water container.  You choose between $547.50 and $0.46 annually.

The Environment

Let’s do the math on this one. It takes one barrel of oil to make about 5000 water bottles. In Toronto, where they have a successful recycling program, 35% of the 100 million plastic disposable bottles that are discarded each year end up in the landfill. That’s 35 million plastic bottles or 7000 modified barrels of oil going to the landfill per year. Why? Because we insist on paying extra for tap water in a bottle, and then tossing the bottle in the garbage.

That  brings us to the garbage dilemma. These 100 million bottles tossed in the landfill each year will each take up to 1000 years to biodegrade. How long can the environment sustain this level of toxic, non-biodegradable garbage? Ten years ago, we did not drink bottled water so this is yet another additional burden on our planet.

Your Health

Tap water is regulated by the your Provincial/Territorial Health Authority and bottled water is regulated by Canada’s Food and Drugs Act. This means that your tap water is probably tested at least once daily and at several points through out the system while bottled water is tested annually. If you think that contamination can only happen to tap water, think again. Can you think of any food recalls? There have been more food recalls in my town than there have been problems with tap water, and that is probably the same for you.

Another health issue related to regulation include those informative labels that we now have on our food. I think these labels are great, but they don’t always tell the entire story. When it comes to water, the  regulations need review for a number of reasons. Here is a quote from Health Canada with an explanation,

“Apart from setting limits on arsenic and lead, the current Regulations do not contain specific, detailed parameters for chemical and radiological contaminants in bottled water and packaged ice, so the Government uses the Guidelines for Canadian Drinking Water Quality as a benchmark to assess the safety of bottled water. But nothing in the Regulations obliges manufacturers to observe the Guidelines during the production of bottled water and packaged ice.”

According to the labels on the bottled water we buy in Canada, it has no calories or sugar in it, but it might have nitrates, which are only safe in levels under 10. In Europe and many other parts of the world, bottled water labels must include the levels of nitrates. Here is an example of an informative water label.

What can you do?

1. Drink tap water at home and at work.
2. Buy a reusable water bottle and take it with you.
3. Ask for tap water when you are out.
4. Learn more and advocate for Canada’s water systems. Here are some places you can learn more…

http://www.ecojustice.ca/clean-water

http://www.safewater.org/

http://www.worldwater.org/

I have an affinity for social business so when I came across the following social business, I had to share.

Christine Kavanagh, a social worker, who focuses on job skill development, in Toronto, Ontario and who has a passion for the environment; questioned how she could avoid throwing out her plastics, and then, how she could extend that goal to the plastics that others were discarding. What emerged was a creative social business that merged environmental stewardship, job training for individuals with intellectual disabilities, and part of the solution to Toronto’s bedbug dilemma within a stylish product the most particular designers would be proud to integrate into their design. Greenbean Studio home of the Eco Pillow was born.

Integrating her work as a social worker for marginalized members of our society, Christine uses Greenbean Studio to offer a job-training program for individuals with intellectual disabilities. People start out in the job-training program and come and go as they please at this stage. During the job training, someone from Eco Pillows picks the trainees up and drops them off as well as supplies food and drink. Although trainees do earn a small amount of money, the real payoff is the service provided by Greenbean Studio and the sense of belonging and contribution. People work at their own pace and on their own terms, depending on their needs. If someone really enjoys the work, once the training program is complete, they can be hired on at a level that suits their abilities.

How does saving plastics from landfills relate to pillows? The plastic is used to fill the pillow, of course! First off the plastic must be clean, no baby carrot bags or any food residue. Secondly, only soft plastics will do, hard plastics just wouldn’t work in a pillow. The plastic is not processed in anyway, but there is a certain technique to preparing the plastic and stuffing the pillows, hence the job training mentioned above. So the stuffing of the pillows is 100% community plastic.

This leads to their popularity with hotels, as bedbugs cannot nest in them. In fact, as Christine says, “nothing can live on plastic.” Because bedbugs cannot burrow down into the plastic, they cannot lay their eggs and the bedbug cycle stops with these pillows. In the past, hotels have had to discard contaminated pillows. However, with Eco Pillows that isn’t necessary and that leads to less waste and saves money.

Eco Pillows are not only functional but they are also beautiful, stylish and fun. Take a look at the photos of some of the pillows. I think you will agree.

We all seem to know by now that we should be using cloth bags instead of asking the stores to supply plastic bags for us. Being imperfect, I don’t always remember to have them when I pop into the grocery store to pick up those missing ingredients for that day’s dinner.

The other day when I told the clerk I had forgotten my cloth bag, she said, “That’s O.K. These bags are biodegradable.” She’s right. It may take up to 1000 years, but all plastic bags are biodegradable. Then just yesterday, I read a story that gave me hope for those bags I carried away that day.

Daniel Burd, a 17-year-old high school student from Waterloo, Ontario has earned top prize (and $10,000) at the 2008 Canada-wide Science Fair in Ottawa. What fabulous experiment did he do, and what discoveries did he make? He calls it: Plastic not Fantastic.

He decided to focus on the plastic bag problem. As he states in the background to his experiment, “Plastic bags are very popular in our daily lives and have a harsh environmental impact on our ecosystems. Every year, approximately 500 billion plastic bags are used worldwide and billions of those are dumped into the oceans. Countless wildlife, including sea-lions, whales, birds and turtles ingest the plastic bags and die every year.”

His hypothesis was that since polyethylene (PE), - the material plastic bags are made from – does degrade naturally, he could isolate the microorganisms responsible and use them to speed up the process. And that he did.

In fact, he predicts that the process developed in his experiment could be used on an industrial scale and could reduce the process of degradation from 20 to 1000 years to three months. As he states, “this would save the lives of millions of wildlife species and save space in landfills.”

I will do better at remembering to bring my own bags to the store. I promise. In the meantime, until we all make cloth bags an everyday part of our lives, young people like Daniel Burd are finding solutions to our destructive behaviours.

Good on you Daniel Burd!

For those who would like the details…

Plastic Not Fantastic PDF