Last minute Christmas tips



1.    On Christmas morning, sort wrapping as you go, creating piles for trash, recyclables and reusable ribbon, bags and paper. Tuck them away for next year.

2.    Remember that wrapping paper is not recyclable. Choose reusable bags instead and save them from year to year.

3.    Cardboard boxes and packaging, as long as they’re not soiled or waxed, can be recycled. Some boxes might be worth saving to reuse at another time. Flatten the boxes you’re going to recycle for easy storage.

4.    On rigid plastic packaging, look for the recycling symbol with a number in the middle. Any plastic with a number between 1 and 7 can go in the blue bins. They’re few and far between on children’s toys but it’s still worth checking.

5.    Don’t get lazy over the holidays when it comes to basic household recycling. Nuf said.

6.    Keep composting over the Holidays. If you’re hosting a gathering and using disposable plates, buy paper plates and toss them in the compost bin for an easy clean up.

7.    Do what you can to reduce food waste. Start with a small serving and go back for more if you’re still hungry.

8.    Compost your Christmas tree. Many communities offer a tree mulching service for easy Christmas clean up.

9.    Save Christmas cards and use them to make gift tags next year.

10.   Bask in all that is wonderful about the Holiday Season and share your joy with others.

The Christmas tree debate -- choose real over fake

Just because an artificial tree is reusable doesn't mean it's environmentally preferable. It's the opposite, actually. Fake Christmas trees have a nasty carbon footprint due to the fact that they're made from petroleum products, usually manufactured in China where environmental regulations can be lax, and shipped half way around the world to reach your home. Artificial trees off-gas, polluting the air in your home, and can't be recycled or composted. Real trees, on the other hand, come from sustainably-managed local forests (in my neck of the woods anyway) and are compostable. Choosing a real tree is one more way to buy local over the Holidays.

Thoughtful gift ideas

Remember the excitement you had as a child during the lead up to Christmas? All you had to do was wait for it to arrive. Not that waiting was easy, but it was thrilling. Fast forward to adulthood and December is often a blur of shopping, cooking and decorating. It’s busy, sometimes stressful and less than thrilling for many.  

To put your Holiday challenges in perspective, the CBC radio program The Current recently aired a show about poverty in Canada and asked listeners to share their personal experiences. One of the stories that stood out was from a mother who, strapped for cash, can’t buy her children gifts. To make up for it she focuses on giving them her time, love and attention. “What you can’t give them in one way you have to make up for in other ways,” she said. Her young children (also interviewed) were grounded, thoughtful and wise beyond their years.  

Her comment made me wonder what some people who do receive loads of gifts (kids in particular) might be missing out on. It also reminded me of a recent chat I had with a friend who said she wished her young daughter’s grandparents would give her daughter time instead of stuff, an afternoon outing together rather than a toy.  

Gift giving can really be so simple. 

Thinking outside of the box (literally) for holiday giving is one way to add more meaning to the Season and giving non-traditional gifts is memorable and meaningful in ways that are especially appropriate for this thoughtful season.  

If you still have gifts to buy (and who doesn’t) or if you’d like to begin a new tradition, consider these worthwhile causes.   

Do Good Today is a Saint John-based organization focused on reducing poverty in Saint John, and supports eight local organizations that are working to reduce poverty in our area. Links on this site simplify the giving process, and let you choose to give time, money, or both, to the Boys and Girls Club, the Resource Centre for Youth, P.R.O. Kids, First Steps Housing Project and others.  

The CBC Saint John annual Harbour Lights Campaign is another initiative that makes it easy to give to many organizations in one shot. The campaign supports food banks from St. Stephen to Sussex so your donation can reach more people throughout our region. CBC is taking donations right up until December 23 so there is still time to give, if you haven’t already.  

Nature Conservancy Canada has “packaged” wildlife habitat to give as gifts, in an effort to raise funds, and awareness, for the habitat crunch threatening many of our native species.

World Wildlife Fund – Canada offers endangered animal “adoptions” and a special initiative to help protect polar bears and their habitats whereby Coca-Cola will match your donation dollar for dollar. Adoption orders must be received by December 18 to guarantee arrival in time for Christmas.

I wish you an abundance of the simple pleasures that Christmas brings.

How do you wrap a reindeer?

Give symbolic gifts of nature this Christmas, and help protect the habitat of caribou, owls, bears, lynx and more. Gifts range from $40 to $400. Visit the Nature Conservancy Canada site for details.

Every Gift of Canadian Nature includes:

• An eco-friendly colour calendar featuring landscapes from across Canada - a daily reminder of your support of these wild places or a wonderful holiday gift to give to a friend to enjoy.
• A special gift certificate to personalize.
• A letter from NCC President and CEO, John Lounds, informing your gift recipient that a donation has been made on their behalf to protect Canadian wildlife habitat

Thoughtful consumption

Last year we turned my children's artwork
into note cards that they gave as gifts to
their grandmothers.

 I love Buy Nothing Day, an annual event that encourages people to take a break from consumption. The event, now in its 20^th year, falls on that wild shopping day known as Black Friday, (the day after American Thanksgiving and one of the busiest shopping days of the year in the U.S.)

Black Friday or not, it’s easy to get caught up in the frenzy of spot sales, buy-one-get-one-free offers and the lure of discount prices.  People come home from weekend shopping trips with heaps of stuff that they just couldn’t pass up because the price was so low. (Mind you, even Frenchy’s and Value Village shoppers fall prey to the same bug. They just spend less in one shot.)

Consciously going a day without buying anything can inch you toward what I call thoughtful consumption -- carefully considering what you purchase (Is it necessary? Will it get used? Do I already have some of these? Is there a bit too much plastic packaging for my liking?) It’s a helpful mindset as we all dive into Christmas shopping.  

Like most people, I’m happy to buy or make gifts for those on my Christmas list. But buying for the sake of buying or purchasing something, anything, just to check a name off a list can take the fun out of Holiday shopping. I can sympathise, finding just the right gift for someone can be exhausting and sometimes impossible.

How do you avoid the stress of searching for the perfect gift or buying something just to get it over with (only to have it sit in a closet some place)? I aim for the practical with a touch of pizazz.  Practical is great because it means the item will get used and the pizazz makes it a little special, just right for the Holidays.

I splurge on good wool socks for my husband, the kind that he’d never treat himself to. I treat my mom and sisters to high quality cooking ingredients and they often do the same for me. All of this stuff is enjoyed, and used. 

Here are some other ideas for thoughtful (and useful) gift giving:

Is there someone on your list who loves tea, or coffee or chocolate? Create your own gift basket full of their favourites or some you know they’d love to try but would never buy for themselves. Another idea - baskets of locally-made goods are fun to give, and to receive.

Restaurant gift cards, museum memberships, tickets to sporting events, concerts or the theatre, tucked in a gift bag and tied with a pretty bow are thoughtful gifts that will get used. So are donations to community charities, made in the name of someone special. Can you think of a non-profit that the recipient has a connection with, whether through volunteer activities or direct care?

Thinking before you buy is a good lesson for all of us. It might mean that we come home with fewer things, but less clutter is a gift in itself.

Celebrate Buy Nothing Day!



Black Friday or not, it’s easy to get caught up in the frenzy of spot sales, buy-one-get-one-free offers and the lure of discount prices.  Instead, spend the day unshopping, unspending and unwinding.

Watch the Do The Green Thing video

Fracking costs outweigh the benefits

Fracking puts our waterways at risk, not to mention
 our drinking water and air quality

“If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is" comes to mind as I follow the issue of fracking in New Brunswick. My eco-mind weighs the rosy economic picture that dominates the debate against the fact that fracking is considered one of the top five environmental challenges facing the globe today.

No issue garners that status without some scientific weight behind the worry.

More and more research is coming to light suggesting that the economic cost of fracking (not to mention the social and environmental cost) might far outweigh any economic benefit we could ever hope to realize from the industry.

With just a little bit of digging you'll find more info on what all the worry is about. As an example, the Drilling down series includes months worth of investigative journalism by The New York Times that exposes the key concerns about the industry and shows what it's like for communities living with the fallout of the shale gas bubble.

To form a fair opinion on the issue, New Brunswickers need an honest assessment of the costs and benefits of shale gas extraction. But we're not getting that. Aside from the fact that the Provincial government's online information reads like it was cut and pasted from industry fact sheets, its nothing-bad-could-happen tone is naïve. Governments in many areas have either banned or suspended fracking and others are labouring over whether or not to allow it because a mountain of evidence is accumulating demonstrating that the economic, social and environmental cost is too great to make it worthwhile.

We all need to weigh in on the debate and, regardless of where you stand on the issue, here are some things you need to consider:

* Each well could use up to 80 million litres of fresh water to extract the gas (according to government data). And the government has no idea how many wells could be developed in the province. Our supply of fresh drinking water isn't bottomless.

* For each well, the fracking water could contain up to 800,000 litres of fracking "fluid," a mixture of known toxins. Fracking water is further contaminated with radioactive residue naturally occurring in the rock.

* Contaminated fracking water - that's billions and billions of litres of untreated waste water - will work its way into the Kennebecasis River, other nearby waterways and drinking water.

* There are significant air quality issues associated with fracking. New research by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control found breast cancer rates were increasing in counties in Texas with the highest natural gas air emissions. Meanwhile rates were declining in all other counties.

* The government speaks highly of a new regulatory framework under development to protect our air, water, livelihood - everything we know and love about living in Southern New Brunswick. But how do you build any trust or confidence when an exploration company snubs exploration regulations?

All economic development requires compromise but with fracking the trade-off might be more than you bargained for. If it sounds too good to be true...

Make your own carbonated drinks, with tap water!



Carbonate tap water and nix the store
bought (often imported) mineral water
and club soda.

I love carbonated water with a slice of lemon or lime, may be a sprig of mint in the summer, or poured half-and-half with homemade rhubarb juice in the spring. It's refreshing and thirst quenching. But I don't like the mounds of bottles that accumulate in our recycling bin. I'm happy to cart the empties off to the depot, but since recycle is the "R" of last resort, I'd rather avoid the bottles altogether.  


A friend introduced us to Sodastream, an easy way to carbonate tap water. It's a countertop gadget with CO2 cartridges that are refillable (at Sears, among other places).

Carbonate to your liking -- lots of bubbles or a few -- and nix the cans and bottles of mineral water and club soda.

EcoLogo certification helps you find safe cleaning products

Look for the EcoLogo symbol

 on cleaning products to be sure that they're safe.

Sometimes when I mention to people how toxic most household cleaning products are they get a little overwhelmed. After all, homes need to be cleaned and if you can’t trust that your favourite products are safe for you and the environment what do you do? And how do you know if the product next to it on the grocery store shelf is any better?

I could print a list of harmful ingredients to look out for but when it comes down to it, ingredient lists on most household cleaning products are nonexistent. The back label is usually filled with poison control information and other warnings. Interestingly enough the products that do list ingredients are the eco-friendly options.

If you’re in search of less-toxic, eco-friendly cleaning products, going the unscented route is the simplest place to begin. But that only addresses one part of the problem (albeit a significant part).

To save all the stress and worry of figuring out if a cleaning product is reasonably safe and effective, I default to products carrying the EcoLogo symbol. This very recognizable seal consists of three interlocking doves in the shape of a maple leaf, surrounded with the words “Environmental Choice”. (Some certified products use a variation of the seal that simply says EcoLogo Certified.)

Founded in 1988 by the Government of Canada but now recognized world-wide, EcoLogo is a meaningful, trustworthy certification standard that is earned only by products that are healthy, sustainable and eco-friendly.

The list of products that carry the EcoLogo certification is very broad, including everything from household cleaners to paint, flooring, garbage bags and rechargeable batteries. In the household cleaners category you can find multipurpose cleaners, oven cleaner, dishwasher detergent, dish detergent, tub & tile cleaner, carpet cleaner and more.

The standards are often revised and were recently strengthened for household cleaners. To be certified, household cleaners must now limit the use of chemicals known to trigger or aggravate asthma (asthmagens). The EcoLogo program also excludes other unsafe ingredients, including ammonia, formaldehyde and phthalates, all hazardous chemicals commonly found in cleaning products.

Products that fall under the new standards are general purpose, bathroom and glass cleaners as well as dish detergents, degreasers and cleaners for cooking appliances. (The standard also includes industrial, vehicle and boat cleaners.)

The simplest way to find EcoLogo certified products is to look in the natural food section of major grocery stores. When I checked in the general cleaning aisle I wasn’t able to find any products with the certification, although there were a few products that “looked” green. But when they aren’t third-party certified, you can’t be sure.

If you want to avoid looking at labels altogether you can switch to vinegar. It’s a non-toxic, all-purpose cleaner that cleans drains, deodorizes rooms, removes stains, cleans toilets, and the rest of the bathroom. Use it to scrub floors, sinks, counters and as a general laundry aid.  For more information on the EcoLogo program and to search out other EcoLogo certified products visit ecologo.org.





That "clean" smell - not always a good thing



Nothing compares to the cleaning power of a good breeze.

One thing I lament about the coming colder weather is the fact that I won’t be opening the windows to air out the house. We have an air exchange system but nothing compares to the cleaning power of a good breeze.

With the windows closed I think more about indoor air quality and the everyday products that can make our homes decidedly unhealthy. Ironically, some of the worst indoor air polluters are the products that we use to clean and freshen up our homes, products like household cleaners, laundry detergents and air fresheners. And although many of the cleaning compounds themselves are related to health concerns, it’s the synthetic fragrances in these products that are a great concern. These artificial scents can contain hundreds of chemicals, none of which are required to be listed on labels. Instead, companies can use the catch-all term “fragrance” in ingredient lists.

In my books, fragrance is just another word for hormone disruptors, a range of common chemicals that interfere with the body's hormone systems and have been linked to some cancers, diabetes, central nervous system issues and fertility problems.

Research is growing regarding the dangers of the free wheeling use of these chemicals, leading to proposed legislation in the U.S. (Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals Exposure Elimination Act of 2011) which aims to prevent exposure to these chemicals in everyday products. Nothing is on the books yet in Canada.

Think of all of the scented products that you have in your home. Laundry detergent, fabric softeners, dryer sheets, bathroom cleaners, all purpose cleaners, stain removers, air fresheners, carpet cleaners, you name it. Virtually every cleaning product in your home that is scented contains a range of toxic chemicals. (The only safe scents are those courtesy of essential oils).

If you can smell these fragrances they’re entering your body, and holding your breath while you scrub the bathtub doesn’t really help. Children are especially vulnerable to these toxins, including developing fetuses. Hormone disruptors in household products are being washed down the drain and into our waterways causing similar problems with aquatic life.

It isn’t difficult to rid your home of scented cleaning products. Simply choose the unscented version. For those products that don’t offer an unscented option, choose an alternative. Avoid any product with “fragrance” on the ingredient lists or labeled with undeniably artificial scents (think “spring rain” or “ocean breeze”).

• Avoid aerosols and sprays since they release smaller particles so are inhaled deeper into your lungs
• Avoid air fresheners altogether, including sprays, gels and plug-ins. The chemical load in these products is especially high.
• Choose products scented with essential oils (look for the EcoLogo certification to be sure that the scent isn’t artificially enhanced).
• Go back to basics with products. Use baking soda as an air freshener and vinegar as a cleaner.
• Open the window to disperse an odor or air out your house

Making the conscious choice to buy safer products is the key to staying healthy in your home.