Stuck On You

I just read this in today's Ideal Bite and I had to share!

You know the little stickers you find on apples, oranges, lemons and jicama (just to name a few)? Well, it turns out produce producers are utilizing a standard system for identifying your juicy favorites. Look for these numbers and you'll know what you're feeding your body!

Look for the labels stuck on your fruits and veggies:

• A four-digit number means it's conventionally grown.
• A five-digit number beginning with 9 means it's organic.
• A five-digit number beginning with 8 means it's Genetically Modified.

Tap That

Did you know that when you buy that plastic liter bottle of water at the 7-11, you're actually consuming 6 liters of water? Yeah - that's because it takes nearly 5 liters of water to manufacture the plastic bottle holding all that H2O. I saw it on Oprah so it must be true.

Not enough to get you to quit the Evian habit? According to the Green Guide, Americans tossed over 22 BILLION empty plastic bottles into the trash. To produce those bottles alone, the US will drain 1.5 million barrels of oil over the course of just a year. That's a lot of Texas Tea we could be using to power our planes, trains and automobiles ... but instead we're tossing it into the landfill where it will sit for the next thousand years.

Do we seriously still think our tap water isn't safe to drink? Sure, we think we're making the "healthy" choice when we opt for Dasani in lieu of a Coke on our road trips, but what about the refill? What's so wrong with re-using those bottles with cold tap water? Or hey, here's a novel idea: how about we use a little forethought and bring our own bottle with us when we're out and about (maybe it could stow in one of your handy canvas totes?).

I'm all for drinking plenty of water and there are times when I will buy a bottle at the airport, but I refuse to buy plastic bottle after plastic bottle. What am I, too good for the tap?
Not anymore! I have my aluminum Sigg bottle set and ready to go in my carry on for next week's trip. I will fill it up at home and at various stops along the way, because it's just not worth it to create the extra trash.

Plus, the cool leaf design on the jug is a much finer fashion statement.

On a Personal Note

My only non-family readers of this blog, Molly and Dave, welcomed their baby boy, Henry, to this little planet of ours on Monday, January 21, and I have to say, I've never been more psyched to see two people become parents. I'm looking forward to seeing how those cloth diapers work ("seeing" mind you, not "trying" them out).

Congratulations you guys ... we can't want to get to know your happy green baby! Huck is one lucky kid to have such super 'rents.

Damn It Feels Good to Be a Recycla'

Aside from the fact that I was a woman about town in a gas-guzzling Xterra today, I feel pretty good on the eco-living homefront. I trucked my 5 gallon tub of low-grade paperboard (cereal, frozen food, silk, egg cartons), box of unwanted catalogs (which I hope will be declining soon, see recent post about canceling catalog mailings) and a couple of corrugated cardboard boxes to my local recycling center. While there, I noted a new container dedicated to office paper and junk mail. Made a note to start office recycling at aSQUARED Online Marketing, Inc.


Then I headed to Target to procure a couple of personal items and some first aid necessities for upcoming vaca. I handed the check out woman my hideously embarrassing old skool Wild Oats canvas bag and she enthusiastically thanked me for bringing in my own bag! I was shocked. Most of the time I get sideways glances from the checkers like I'm some sort of dirty hippie. Instead this woman went on to tell me about the friend who works at the landfill and how she was absolutely appalled at all the plastic bags that get thrown away (about 100 billion annually in the US of A alone). She even went so far as to tell me all about the reusable bags Target was selling for $1.49.

Yeah for consumer awareness. Now - get your own bag!

EcoBag String Bag - great for produce. $10 each

Recyled SailCloth Bags from VivaTerra - $98
(but you'll want to carry it ALL the time)

Fun Tote - Cotton Canvas Tote from Elsewheres
created by independet artists. $32

The Cost of Beauty

Winter is officially taking its toll on my skin. My hands are cracked. The skin on me feet is so dry it's actually itchy and my face is splotchy and tight. I paint such a beautiful picture of myself, yes?

Couple this with our upcoming travel plans, and I was in desperate need of some lightweight bottles of intense moisture. Shopping around at my local Aveda purveyor and then at Target, I was shocked by what I found. Reading labels on beauty products is worse than the ingredient list on a Totino's party pizza! So many words I didn't recognize, except of course, that every potion I picked up at Target included, "petroleum." When I read that I dropped the bottle like it had the plague!

At Aveda, the selection was somewhat better: The Hand Repair cream I ultimately purchased has no petroleum or parabens, which is a real score in the beauty world ... and I paid for it. $18 for 4 fl. oz.

Next up: Face Lotion. My typical Aveda creme comes in a glass bottle, which isn't good for traveling around the world. My requirements for this category included: Plastic bottle, ability to close the top and SPF. At Aveda that limited me to one option - Tourmaline Charged Protecting Lotion. While paraben was on the ingredient list (as the last item!) and it set me back a whopping $38 for 2.5 fl. oz. I went for it. The label says it "infuses skin with radiance"!

How do these items rank on EWG's Skin Deep report?
The tourmaline face lotion is a "yellow" 5. Not too toxic ... but not exactly "good" either.
I couldn't find a report on the Hand Relief lotion - but all the rest of the moisturizers rank from 3-5 ... not that bad, I guess, especially compared to the crap I was looking at at Target. Vaseline Intensive Care Aloe lotion ranks a "red" 8.

One winner that I will go back to Target for is the Aveeno Active Naturals Daily Moisturizer. It's a good everyday lotion (with a small flip top lid, great for travel) and it ranks a "green" 2 on the EWG scale!

Turns out you can find a good deal in non-toxic beauty out there!

Ode to Indian Food

Oh Indian Food - how I love you. How is it possible I have gone 29 years without embracing your spicy curry flavors, or nibbling on your chewy, buttery Naan bread? Can I say that I have really "lived" for all these years I have gone without experiencing the many ways you can turn a potato into a saucy main dish?

If ordering things off a menu by number is wrong ... I never want to be right.

Setting the Tone

I originally made fun of Oprah's "Favorite Green Things" show, which I recently saw in reruns over the holidays. It's a riff on the ever-popular, all-consumer "Favorite Things" holiday show, which turns people into crazed shoppers seeking William Sonoma panini presses and Ugg boots. Kind of like our moms in the 80s hunting Cabbage Patch dolls (I got a homemade version named Jamie, who was just as cute and since my mom worked at a hospital I got a birth certificate with actual baby footprints on it! I wonder where that kid is today).

Anyway, the show was full of all those useful tips like: Donate clothes, don't throw them away. Use CFL lightbulbs. Don't spray your house with bleach and toxic chemicals. One tip, though, hit home.

Elizabeth Rogers, who wrote The Green Book, a collection of "little things that make a big difference" said that the average person uses 6 paper napkins a day. She suggests that if we all gave up just one napkin a day, we could save a BILLION pounds of paper waste from going to the landfills (remember: you can't recycle soiled paper, including pizza boxes with cheese stuck in it).

While I don't think I use 6 napkins a day, I definitely felt this was an area of unnecessary waste I could easily eliminate, because even though we have recycled, bleach-free Seventh Generation paper products - it's still waste paper. Anyway, I have a drawer full of cloth napkins I've picked up along the way for various Thanksgiving meals or "fancy" occasions that need to be used.

So, the Angelos are going 5-star. We use cloth napkins every night with dinner instead of paper. It adds a certain element of class to the veggie burgers. And unless Marc has another incident with the wine glass or I over-dress the salad, we can get 2 or 3 uses out of each Ralph Lauren Home beauties before I have to wash 'em.

Fishy Business

Marc and I went out to dinner with our friends Jim and Jen on Friday night to one of our favorite Italian eateries - Enzios. Wine flowed, conversation bubbled and I'm pretty sure I convinced Jen to come to Napa with me for the Carneros Half Marathon (might have been the wine talking on both our parts!).

As Marc pondered the specials: some sort of steak with marsala-marinated wild mushrooms or a wild-caught grouper with piccata sauce, Jim was working some texting magic on his new super phone. Within seconds he was telling us that grouper was probably not the best fish to be eating, from a sustainability POV. Apparently grouper is a long-living fish (it changes sex as it ages!) and is often over-fished. Grouper also has levels of mercury that may be a health risk to adults and children.

How did Jim get all this information from his phone? I found out in today's IdealBite newsletter: Blue Ocean Institute FishPhone. Send a text to 30644 with the message FISH in all caps, followed by the name of the fish you want to know about, and it'll fire back sustainability info on that species. Or, check it out online: FishPhone.org.

Considering Marc is not a woman of child-bearing years, is limiting his red meat intake and he eats relatively little fish anyway, he went with the grouper.

Good Bye Junk Mail

On the topic of trash ... there are days when there is nothing in our mailbox but catalogs. J.Crew, LL Bean, Duluth Trading Company (??), Campmoor, Athleta (now I get two copies!), Williams Sonoma, Crate & Barrel, not to mention all those Sierra Trading Post books. It's not that I don't love to look at catalogs - it's a throwback to my childhood when I would dog ear page after page of the Spiegel and JC Penny catalogs with items I would never buy but that were "perfect" for back-to-school.

But, alas, all this window shopping makes for a large box of glossy pages to be disposed of. I read in my IdealBite email today: U.S. catalog production uses 53 million trees and enough water to fill 81,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools each year. And, Americans waste about 8 hours per year dealing with junk mail.

So, I'm opting out. Just like the "do not call" list, you can put your name and address on a similar list with direct mail companies. I just registered me, my former me (maiden name) and Marc on this site:

https://www.directmail.com/directory/mail_preference/

It lets you choose if you want to still receive those Victoria's Secret catalogs and credit card offers.

Or, try this one:
https://www.catalogchoice.org/

Trash Talking

The average American throws away 4.5 lbs. of trash every day.

According to the EPA, "garbage" or "trash" consists of "everyday items such as product packaging, grass clippings, furniture, clothing, bottles, food scraps, newspapers, appliances, paint, and batteries."

I, for one, never throw clothes or shoes into the garbage. Instead, items I no longer wear/want sit in trash bags in the garage waiting to be taken to the Goodwill. The bags typically sit in "charity purgatory" for an average of 4-6 months before Marc finally gets fed up with them taking up gear space and he schleps it to ARC.

Back to the 4.5 lbs. of trash ... that's a lotta crap! We recycle a TON with bins of low-grade paperboard, magazines and co-mingleables overflowing in our garage, so I'm pretty sure the Angelo daily load is slightly less. Yet, I feel we can be doing more! The worst part of the average 4.5 lbs. is the "food scrap" inclusion. This organic matter should be returned to the earth to naturally biodegrade and enhance the soil. Instead its preserved in plastic to be fossilized with the rest of our trash in the landfill.

I'm talking composting here people!

I know the vast majority of our trash is food waste and I'm willing to bet that if we were to incorporate a composter into our recycling routine, we would put out only 2 bags of trash a month (compared to the one or two bags per week we current dump).

Composting doesn't mean smelly heaps that attract critters and require a bunch of hands-on maintenance. New composting bins are fully enclosed and come in a variety of sizes to suit your level of compost needs.

Not an avid gardener? It doesn't really matter - you can spread compost in flower beds, use it for potted plants or sell it to your green thumb neighbors! The point is, we're keeping good organic materials out of the landfill!

I've had my eye on the EcoTumbler for over a year now ... I think the time has come!

Is This Weird?

Sometimes I pee in the dark.

I figure, hey why not? I'm saving a little bit of energy by not flipping the switch and because I have the benefit of sitting down to tinkle, there's no chance of a splatter incident.

BTW, this is not a photo of my actual toilet. I only wish!

My New Favourite Breakfast

Inspired by European Museli, here is my new fav way to start the day:

1/2 c. mixed berries (right now I have a frozen organic variety from Costco with blackberries, raspberries and blueberries. I let them thaw out before eating).

1/2 c. quick oats (not cooked)

1/2 c. vanilla soy milk

Let these three ingredients hang out in the fridge for about 30 minutes. Mix it up with some nuts (right now I have pecans, but sliced almonds would be better) and enjoy!

Bon apetito!

Next time I eat this (tomorrow) I will set up a photo shoot with Marc so you can get the full experience.