• Biodegradable toothbrush or razor
• Sea Sponges
• All natural soaps and non-toxic cosmetics
• Bottle of eco-friendly nail polish
• Beeswax or soy candle
• Organic spice packs
• Small denomination gift certificate to a fair trade or environmental charity
• Bottle of essential oil
• Organic pet treats and toys
• Fair trade coffee sample packages
• Pens and pencils of recycled materials
• Reusable Cloth Bags
• Eco efficiency light bulbs
• Organic flower seed packages
• Online subscription to Upcycle Magazine
• A handmade tree ornament
• Sustainably harvested wooden kitchen utensils or makeup brushes

If your budget is a little higher, you can’t go wrong with conflict free diamonds or recycled glass jewellery.

If your eco-diva is a mom, include some organic baby bath products, cornstarch-based toddler spoons, or even a hand-written recipe card for edible finger paints.  Parents are always short on time so anything you can do to make their lives easier will be welcomed.

You might not think of snow sports as having a huge impact on the environment, but Canadian companies make eco-friendly ski or snowboard wax that don’t end up washing into streams when the snow melts.

Everyone has a gadget-lover or tech junkie on their list.  Consider a solar-powered cell phone charger or biodegradable USB stick.

For the foodies in your life, the ideas are endless: organic spice mixes, seasoned oils, hand-made chocolates, preserves or artisan cheese.  Even a piece of seasonal fruit or a baked sweet will delight your foodie and make your stocking a sweet treat.

And of course, if your stocking isn’t as full as you’d like it to be, top it up with a copy of There’s Lead in Your Lipstick.  Or check out the uber eco-friendly options at the Cascades online boutique.

There are hundreds of little gift ideas, but what is most appreciated is the thoughtfulness and practicality of your gift-giving.  It demonstrates that you care about her health, values and lifestyle choices.

What are some of your favourite eco treats for stuffing the stocking of your special someone?

If you are planning to spend any money to fix up your house, the furnace is the smartest place to start. I know it’s tucked away in the basement so no one can see where you spent the small fortune for a new one. But a furnace that is more than 20 years old really needs to be replaced. A new furnace is a big investment, but the difference it will make to your monthly heating bills will help offset the cost. Look for an Energy Star high-efficiency furnace, ideally around 90 percent efficiency. The percentage refers to how much of the fuel source is actually converted into heat. Lower-efficiency models send a lot of that expensive fuel out your chimney—so your money is literally going up in smoke. A dual-speed fan on the furnace means the unit will use less energy when there’s less demand for heat.

Even an Energy Star needs a strong supporting cast—be sure to replace your furnace filter once a month during the winter and have your ducts cleaned regularly. In older houses a duct cleaning should include an inspection to see that no sections have become dislodged—if one of your vents doesn’t seem to be delivering much air to the room, that could be why.

Programmed for Savings

Let’s take that high-efficiency dual-speed fan furnace up another eco-notch. Why pay for heating or cooling when no one is home? Or when everyone is asleep under cozy blankets? Spend $50 to $100 on a programmable thermostat—it will pay for itself after just one winter. Program it to suit your family’s schedule, with separate settings for weekdays and weekends. For every degree you lower the temperature (or raise it in the summer), you save 2 percent on your energy costs.

Look for vegetable-based soaps or glycerine soaps. Bar soaps mean much less packaging—it’s easy to find biodegradable bar soaps anywhere from health stores to gift shops.

Here are four Green Granny lessons that might give us more perspective on how we can increase our own cool, now that green is the new black.

1. Granny made things from scratch, from pies and preserves to downright ugly Christmas sweaters. You may not be of a mind to start canning peaches or darning your own socks; luckily, the popularity of “buy local” campaigns has enabled small business owners to make a living doing what they love, and helping you avoid what you don’t. Visit your local farmer’s market or browse through Etsy.com to support professional artists and pie-makers who use locally-sourced and wholesome ingredients to support themselves and save you time.

2. Tough economic times during the Great Depression meant families had to make do with less and conserve what they had. Upcycling is a fabulously green trend that encourages thinking twice about how to get a second life out of an old pair of jeans or old hair brush. Instead of tossing that finicky laptop in the trash, have it fixed. Laptop repair is the new sock-darning.

3. In the days before gluttonous portion sizes, people ate less, plain and simple. In the United States, there’s even a Small Plate Movement encouraging families to reduce their consumption by reducing their dinnerware size. Your folks had to finish everything on their plates, but plate sizes were 30 per cent smaller. Try eating family meals from smaller plates and leave others for dinner parties.

4. Beauty regimens were less complicated in Granny’s younger years. Cold cream was the most versatile beauty product of the times. You can make a modern non-toxic version with beeswax, mineral oil and essential oils. Women also curled their hair with fabric strips, without the aid of chemical styling products, expensive heat tools or disposable plastic curlers. Vintage hair styles have returned to the runways and brought rag-rolling with it. Consider giving it a try instead of paying for an expensive up-do for your next formal event.

These are some of the small ways to simplify your life to have big impact on your health and lifestyle. If a grandparent has ever shared a story about beauty and wellness in her early years, please consider sharing it with us below.

So, now that you’re sold on the automatic washer, here’s the greenest way to operate it.

#1. Be an Energy Star.

Be sure to buy an Energy Star model to get the most for your money. An Energy Star washer can save you up to $100 in water over its lifetime and an additional $30 every year on your electrical bills. Dishwasher technology is evolving so quickly, you’d think by now they’d have invented a unit that loads itself. Today’s dishwashers use 95 percent less energy than those built in the early 1970s. But Consumer Reports found that those fancy “smart” washers with dirt sensors used significantly more energy than the nonsensor types, and so they recommend skipping that jazzy feature when you’re machine shopping.

Fill It Up

Be sure the dishwasher is full before you turn it on. Using all that energy to heat and dry just a few dishes is such a waste.

#2. Run your dishwasher during off-peak hours.

Once your dishwasher is fully loaded, don’t feel you have to run it right away. Look for a model that comes with a delay setting. In the near future, it will pay to run major appliances during off-peak hours, as more and more utility companies convert to time-of-use billing. For example, by 2010, every home in Ontario will be equipped with a smart electricity meter, which will charge users higher electricity rates during peak hours. If you run your dishwasher at midnight, it will cost you—and the earth—a lot less, as the grid won’t need to draw from coal-fired plants at that hour to keep up with demand. So to save on greenhouse gas emissions and on your electricity bill, run your dishwasher in the middle of the night and wake up to a clean load.

#3. Scrape dishes clean.

Good news for whoever’s on dish duty tonight: no need to pre-rinse your dishes. Pre-rinsing not only wastes water, it doesn’t improve cleaning results. So no need to run the tap—just scrape off extra food before items go into the dishwasher. (Be sure to scrape them well, though. Food waste builds up in the machine and reduces its efficiency, not to mention its effectiveness.) Be sure to regularly clean the filter at the bottom of your dishwasher to keep it running efficiently.

Don’t Be a Water Waster

Much of the world gets by on 2.5 litres of water a day—running the water at the kitchen sink for two minutes uses more than 7 litres of water. When I’m washing those pots and pans and other items that don’t go in the dishwasher, I try to imagine that someone from an impoverished developing nation is standing there watching me. It sounds goofy, but it actually helps draw my attention to how much I leave the tap running. Canadians are among the highest water users in the world—according to Environment Canada, we use roughly twice as much per person as in other industrialized countries. Guilt can be a powerful motivation to change.

Look for these three logos to help you cut through all that jargon. If you buy something labelled with one of these, you’ll know that you’ve made a responsible consumer choice.

The Leaping Bunny



The Coalition for the Consumer Information on Cosmetics marks products with a leaping bunny logo.  According to its website, this program is a “cruelty-free standard… for companies producing cosmetic, personal care, and household products. (It) provides the best assurance that no new animal testing is used in any phase of product development by the company, its laboratories, or suppliers.”  If you like happy bunnies, the bunny logo stamp is for you.

Organic Canada

Canada’s Food Inspection Agency is the regulatory body responsible to set standards for organic certification for vegetables, fruit, dairy products, meat and processed foods.  Since 2009, CFIA has used the Organic Canada logo to ensure “only products that have at least 95 per cent organic content are… advertised as organic, organically grown, organically raised, organically produced, or any other similar labels or abbreviations.”  If you’re more than a label-reader, the Canadian Organic Growers website contains more valuable resources to help you make the best food choices for your family.

Fair Trade Canada

Simply put, Fair Trade means that all people involved in the production, selling and buying of goods and services in the global marketplace were treated fairly in social, economic and environmental terms.  When you see the Fair Trade Certified logo, you can be assured that “the farmers and artisans behind those products get a better deal.”

Processed Chlorine Free

What kind of impact did the manufacturing of a given product have on the environment? This stamp of approval is an indication that a company uses the most sustainable practices to produce a product. Look for it on textiles, food, and paper products (like Cascades!) to ensure that no use of the cancer-causing pollutant chlorine is present at any point in the item’s production cycle.

Label-reading should be simple.  If you can’t pronounce it, or don’t understand it, either look it up on your mobile phone before putting it in your cart or don’t buy it all.  Our purchasing habits are part of the cycle of supply and demand.  When our behaviour as consumers aligns with our values, we trigger production and manufacturing to supply more of what we want, and less of what we don’t.

If you know of other trusted labels, send them to us and we’ll include them in future posts on trustworthy logos.

Get your electricity from above and your heat from below. Geothermal heating takes advantage of stable temperatures below the earth’s surface to heat and cool your home. Have you heard of a ground-source heat pump? The idea is that a network of tubes buried two metres underground near your house extracts the heat from below ground, then a pump or compressor circulates that heat through your house. In summer, the system works in reverse, pulling the heat out of your house, the same way a refrigerator works.

You don’t have to understand how it works to know that it makes good sense to use free and renewable heat from the earth. The federal government thinks it makes such good sense, they offer their highest possible retrofit rebate when you replace your existing heating system with a geothermal heat pump. If you live in Ontario or Saskatchewan, your provincial government will chip in too—you could be looking at a rebate of $7000. A geothermal heating system pays for itself in about four years, and you can say goodbye to your energy bills.

Read the labels carefully.

The skin is our largest and most porous organ, so it’s really important to know what we’re soaking it in and slathering on it. Take that extra 30 seconds to examine the fine print on the label. Look carefully for any of the nasty chemicals listed above.

And while more and more companies are willingly phasing out certain synthetic ingredients, they may not provide full disclosure on their packaging. A company’s “proprietary blend” of essential oils could still be packed with phthalates, but you’ll never see that on a label. Brian Dockal says that European legislation requires manufacturers to list any potential carcinogens on their packaging and to label them as such—a fairly effective deterrent for manufacturers to even use carcinogenic ingredients. If you’re buying European-made products at a natural food store, you can be fairly sure they’re 100 percent natural. Don’t be fooled by products labeled as “natural,” either—it doesn’t mean a darn thing. Ingredient lists will always be your best bet for knowing exactly what you’re buying.

Be aware of what you put on your hair.

There are so many types of shampoos available today that it’s hard to know which is best not only for your hair, but also for your health and the earth. The general rule for shampoo is the fewer ingredients, the less likely you are to experience buildup.

One of the ingredients common to shampoos is sodium laureth (or lauryl) sulfate, sometimes listed as SLS. Not only has SLS long been suspected (though as yet not proven) to have links to cancer, but it is very harsh on hair, stripping the shaft of moisture, which means of course that you need to use more conditioner to remoisturize, then wash more frequently. SLS is a foaming agent—it helps work up a rich, foamy lather. But don’t be fooled—the foamy suds are not what get your hair clean. Terreessentials shampoo is clay based, basically the opposite of foam, and it works very well to get hair clean and shiny. Prairie Naturals, Druide and Ferlow Botanicals are popular Canadian-made shampoo and conditioner lines free of SLS.

Parabens are usually used as preservatives in hair products. Check the labels for these hormone-mimicking chemicals—Avalon Organics products have recently become paraben free. Be aware, though, that they now use food-grade potassium sorbate as a preservative instead, which some people like to avoid.

German manufacturers must label beauty care products containing parabens as carcinogenic—since no one wants to see that on their product label, most German-made hair products do not contain parabens.

If you are trying to wash that grey right out of your hair, you’re going to have a hard time doing it without chemicals. There are some “natural” hair tints and dyes on the market, but you should really think of them as “less chemical.” Naturcolor and Herbatint are two Italian-made products that have been around for years, and are ammonia and resorcinol free—the inside track tells me Herbatint lasts a little longer. For a chemical-free colour job, try henna, which is a natural tint that will condition and coat the hair with colour, though it is not as effective as dye for covering up the grey.

Maybe once word spreads about the dangers of toxins in bodycare, more facilities will recognize the hazards of those household items; in the meantime, most household hazardous waste depots don’t accept things like shampoo and nail polish. In recent years, municipal take-back programs have expanded their list of acceptable household wastes from just tires and paint to include pharmaceuticals, small appliances and other tricky disposables, but they too will only take that bottle of conditioner once it’s empty.

October 17 – 23 is Waste Reduction Week in Canada. So, in the spirit of trying our best, here’s a list of several household waste facilities across the country. It’s not as complete as we might like, but it’s a start.

The Recycling Council of British Columbia lists retailers willing to take back household waste such as glasses, lightbulbs, batteries, small appliances; however, cosmetics and personal care products are not included.

In Alberta Eco Centers in Edmonton and the Bow Valley Waste Management Commission accept sofas, car batteries, fire extinguishers and just about everything in between, but neither considers cosmetics or personal care items hazardous enough for drop-off.

Saskatchewan offers a searchable database that includes what to do with your old bras and yoga mats but not specifically personal care products.

In Ontario, a provincial recycling council offers free community toolkits for organizers and municipalities to improve their waste reduction and disposal practices.  At MaketheDrop.ca simply enter your postal code for the nearest municipal waste disposal site.  Cosmetics (with the exception of nail polish remover) are not an accepted category at this time.

Residents of New Brunswick can contact their local Solid Waste Commission to ask about specific products, though a quick search of the two biggest cities, Fredericton and Moncton, revealed only paint exchange programs.

In the three biggest Canadian cities, neither Toronto’s Drop off Depots nor Montreal’s Eco Centres accept cosmetics specifically, but in Vancouver the answer seems to depend on the waste disposal contract in different regions of the city.

On Prince Edward Island, there is no charge for disposal at any of the province’s Waste Watch Drop-Off Centres.   By email, the local waste agency confirmed that “Any product that contains any form of chemical is considered hazardous on PEI” and is included in their comprehensive list of accepted items.  The Island Waste Management Corporation even has an Interactive Sorting Guide and application for adding any item you can’t find listed.

An equally commendable program is in place for Newfoundland and Labrador which offer a complete list of all permanent Hazardous Household Waste depots in the province and participating mobile collection municipalities.

If these links don’t apply to where you live, contact your regional municipality or province and ask about a community toxic round-up.  You may be pleasantly surprised your neighbourhood will add cosmetics and personal care products at your request.

For more resources on properly disposing of your household wastes, contact me below:

Twitter

E-mail