Category Archives: Environment

Where the Concrete Ends

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010I’ve mentioned before that my kids go to an alternative public school.  It’s called Equinox, and offers a holistic education with an emphasis on environmental stewardship.  It’s a pioneering school, and established the first public outdoor kindergarten program in Canada.  It’s new and imperfect, but I love. this. school.

One huge imperfection is that our groundbreaking kindergarten is in desperate need of some literal groundbreaking.  The outdoor classroom space that we have been given is a concrete jungle.  The teachers have done an amazing job in spite of the concrete, but with a full-day kindergarten program coming to Equinox in less than four months, the barren space is even more inadequate than before.

Knowing this, a group of parents have galvanized themselves into a veritable force of advocacy!  The Equinox Outdoor Kindergarten committee is launching an ambitious fundraising campaign this morning on indiegogo, an international crowdfunding website.  The way it works:  we spread the word about the campaign, and then donors contribute in return for great perks!  Our goal is to raise a small but meaningful portion of the project to get started and to demonstrate to potential funders that we have significant support for the project within our school community and beyond. Then we’ll be able to leverage the money the cover the full cost of the outdoor kindergarten – much better than the best dollar matching program anywhere!

Preparing the campaign has required tremendous effort from so many people and can only be described as a labour of love.  Hundreds and hundreds of volunteer hours have already gone into it (we have an amazing video to tell you about it!), and we are just starting!  The completed outdoor classroom may not be ready in time for many of the committee member’s children to enjoy, and our scriptwriter has no personal connection to kindergarten at all – but we all worked on the campaign anyway.  What we all share is the belief that environmental education needs to be put on the map for the future of all children, and an outdoor kindergarten is a beautiful inroad to that goal.

We finally have a real chance to make it happen, and with full-day kindergarten around the corner, we need to act now!  Please help if you can – the sooner we have the funds, the sooner we can create a true outdoor classroom and promote environmental education for everyone.

Donate now and help us spread the word!  The kindergarteners and I thank you with all our hearts!

Neighbours and Nationalism

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We had a magnificent snowfall over the weekend.  The photographs in this post were taken on Friday, but so much more continued to fall, that we were utterly blanketed in white on Saturday.  I think snow is especially in the city, where the beautified natural surroundings is simply dramatic.

My husband went to work with my six year old on Saturday morning, but I got the younger boys dressed and we went outside to shovel the walk.  The sun was high and shining, and even with all the snow, it was a mild day.  If our oldest had been with me, he would have called the snow “glitter”.

Many of our neighbours were out shoveling their walks.  Most of the houses on our street have parking in the alleys behind the houses, so shoveling in the front yard just means a walkway or two.  It’s not a big job, so no one uses a snow blower.  It was all quiet, just the scraping of shovels hitting the pavement, everyone using their hands to clear a path.

I met a kindly neighbour who I haven’t seen for awhile.  ”How are you?” I called.

“I’m old,” he replied.  ”This is the fourth time I’ve shoveled.”

“There’s so much.  This is my first time out,”  I said.

He just shook his head at the white around us.

Then I offered, “Isn’t it beautiful though?”

Almost with resignation, he said, “Yeah… it’s lovely.  Makes you want to sing ‘O Canada’”.

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FUN Brought to You by LUSH Cosmetics

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Lush Cosmetics is one of my all-time favourite stores.  I am a huge fan of their fragrances, a devotee of their bath bombs, and I could spend all day inhaling the air in their stores.  Lately, when we have gone on long drives, I have gone out to buy bath bombs to put in the car to make it smell great while we are on the road.  When we reach our destination, we all have the treat of our own bath bomb to use, and the place we’re staying smells great, too.  I am also in awe of their marketing and branding.  One thing they do extremely well is to inform the customer about their product.  Check out this video about the rose harvest for their perfumes.  And this story about the origin of their perfume Imogen Rose, created for the owner’s daughter.  You would not think that words would sell a fragrance, but reading the stories about each perfume in their line only makes me want them more.  I mean, come on, who can refuse a perfume called The Smell of Weather Turning?

Needless to say, when 4mothers received an invitation to attend a lauch of new products at the Queen Street Lush, no one had to twist my rubber arm.  And I am so glad I went because I found the perfect stocking stuffer gifts for kids.

Lush recently launched a new product for kids called Fun.  It is four products in one: it’s modeling dough, it’s soap, it’s shampoo and it’s bubble bath.  The kids make their creations then take them into the bath to scrub up from head to toe.  It comes in a rainbow of colours, each with its own fragrance, and it is serious FUN.

The best part is that a percentage of global sales goes to a charity in Japan.  The nuclear disaster that occurred in Fukushima last year left whole residential areas contaminated (and children unable to play outside).  Donations from the sale of FUN will go to local charities in Japan working towards giving children safe places to play in Fukushima.

Win win win.

Get Outside!

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Great Britain’s National Trust has come up with a list of 50 things to do before you are 11 3/4.  They include skipping stones, climbing trees, observing rock pools, calling owls, and sliding in the mud.

The list makes a great activity to print up, read together and check off.  Then, when you have the list of things still to complete, head outdoors and have some old school fun.

Here is the complete list.

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1. Climb a tree

2. Roll down a really big hill

3. Camp out in the wild

4. Build a den

5. Skim a stone

6. Run around in the rain

7. Fly a kite

8. Catch a fish with a net

9. Eat an apple straight from a tree

10. Play conkers

11. Throw some snow

12. Hunt for treasure on the beach

13. Make a mud pie

14. Dam a stream

15. Go sledging

16. Bury someone in the sand

17. Set up a snail race

18. Balance on a fallen tree

19. Swing on a rope swing

20. Make a mud slide

21. Eat blackberries growing in the wild

22. Take a look inside a tree

23. Visit an island

24. Feel like you’re flying in the wind

25. Make a grass trumpet

26. Hunt for fossils and bones

27. Watch the sun wake up

28. Climb a huge hill

29. Get behind a waterfall

30. Feed a bird from your hand

31. Hunt for bugs

32. Find some frogspawn

33. Catch a butterfly in a net

34. Track wild animals

35. Discover what’s in a pond

36. Call an owl

37. Check out the crazy creatures in a rock pool

38. Bring up a butterfly

39. Catch a crab

40. Go on a nature walk at night

41. Plant it, grow it, eat it

42. Go wild swimming

43. Go rafting

44. Light a fire without matches

45. Find your way with a map and compass

46. Try bouldering

47. Cook on a campfire

48. Try abseiling

49. Find a geocache

50. Canoe down a river

Earth Day: Small Changes

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You know the expression, “Look after the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves”?  I kind of feel that way about green living.  It’s not a perfect analogy since the earth also needs some very big changes, and some of these may require some serious dollars.  But on an individual level, living with a light footprint can be achieved by making small changes, none of which is so momentous in itself, but which cumulatively can really be impactful.

Making even small green steps still takes intention though, and especially if they take time they have to be put on the agenda to materialize.  So I was glad to participate a couple of years ago in One Small Change, an upbeat (if short-lived) online challenge seeking people who would commit to make one small earth-friendly change a month from January to April (and presumably some would continue on from there).  I chose as my four commitments:  caulking our drafty house, learning to make yogurt, baking my own yeast bread, and making my own laundry detergent.

How did I do?  Well, my husband (I didn’t help) did a not bad job caulking the house (there’s more we could do).  I made a single batch of homemade yogurt and baked a single loaf of bread.  I had some difficulty finding the ingredients for the laundry detergent so I didn’t make it.  My performance was very average, and it was a little undignified how I raced to accomplish my challenges just shy of the deadlines.

And yet, every little movement we make in one direction helps to create momentum.  I didn’t know it at the time of my mediocre small change outcomes, but two years later, I am making almost all of the organic yogurt my family eats.  We avoid a lot plastic tubs, and the money that then stays in my pocket I can direct towards the more earth-friendly purchases.

And last week, I went to do the laundry and discovered our detergent tin was empty.  Five minutes later, I had mixed together a double batch of homemade detergent with natural supplies from the closet with my kids in tow, and then I went back downstairs to put on a load.  Just safe biodegradables into the water stream and minimal paper packaging.

Have we caulked the rest of the house or do I bake all our bread from scratch?  Nope.  But there was still positive movement from that voluntary online challenge, and I’m glad I tried it even though it was hardly a wild success at the time, because each green action we take lights a spark.  Not long ago, yogurt and laundry detergent making once seemed daunting and kind of “out there” to me but now I know the recipes by heart and making them is a matter of course.  And these small changes ready me for more.

Which leads me to a couple of new green ideas to implement in the next couple of months.  First, I’ve got to do something about the bread.  What we buy from the store is made from whole grains but has a million ingredients and I’m annoyed every time I get it because I don’t really know what  I’m buying and yet I’m supporting it with my money.  My foray into baking yeast bread showed that I don’t (yet) enjoy it enough to make my own, but I’m close to buying a breadmaker or at least eating less bread in favour of other whole grains.

There is also a fresh jar of yeast in the cupboard that I want to use for making our own pizza dough because I’ve been buying that too but don’t want the preservatives.  My boys would enjoy making it and I love cooking with them, so I’ve got some incentive on making that work.  Who could argue with homemade pizza?

And I’m going to start buying these eggs laid by hens that are raised humanely at a local farm.  And by the way, this sweet cafe that sells them has the best croissants and scones in Toronto, I swear.

Do you have one small change you could make this month, or maybe next?  Pray tell.  Here’s a list of possibilities if you need some inspiration.

And Happy Earth Day to you.  Wishing you a great weekend.

Dear School…

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I know there are some parents who hate litter-less lunches. They hate having to repackage snacks into reusable containers. They hate having to wash bottles. They really don’t want to have to clean backpacks of that miasma made of half-eaten oatmeal cookies and the last three drops left in a juice box sent home for recycling, lest it infect every backpack seam, ruining it forever. I get that.

But then there are those parents like me.  I would really, really like to win the argument which ensues every time I insist that the boys put their recess snack into something that won’t immediately be tossed into a garbage afterward.  We’ve got snack sized containers coming out of our ears, but the boys won’t use them. Why? Because the containers don’t ever fit into their pockets.  Any of them. Ever.  If the container goes to school, it usually doesn’t come home (having been abandoned to some far, forgotten corner of the schoolyard) and that makes me testy.  That just makes them smile and remind me that I’d only just let them take our snacks in snack bags like everyone else, I wouldn’t be mad, and  that just makes me madder.

I thought I was on the higher moral ground, and nary a word of dispute passes my children’s lips when we talk about the consequences of using disposable items on a regular basis.  But children, like adults,  usually tend to do what’s easiest in the short-term, even when it’s not in their best interest in the long term.  I can appeal to their conscience,  and they’ve shown me they care about our environment in other ways, but they can’t be convinced to do so during recess.

If our school mandated that only litter-less snacks be brought to school, I’d be thrilled. Over the moon.  And I’d also have the upper hand: “It’s not just me who thinks this is a good idea; your school does too. And that’s why you have to bring your snack in a recyclable container”.  Success!

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

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While I am certainly not in the exemplary green league of Green Style Mom, Mindful Momma or Happy Simple Living, I am aspiring to be more of an environmentalist.  I may not always make the best choices but since becoming a mother, I am more mindful of the impact my choices will have on the earth.

I was a child when the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle movement took hold.  My teachers would hold up items from the trash and the class would call out in chorus “garbage” or “recycle”.  We then took those ingrained lessons home with us, bundle together with “Never say yes to a cigarette!” and “Just say no to drugs!”, we taught our parents the three Rs with the verve of a religious zealot.

Twenty-five years later, I obsessively dissect packages.  The plastic cover deposited into the “gray bin” and the cardboard backing into the “blue bin”.  All food materials, and compostables make their way into the “green” bin.

Yesterday Nathalie made reference to Mrs. Draper and how her ignorance depicted the general attitudes of a generation.  If ever there were a T.V. mom who embodies the principles of RRR it would be Mrs. Walsh.

Just like the 902010 matriarch, I pick through the washroom garbage before collection day to ensure toilet paper rolls find their way to reincarnation via the blue bin.  I just hope that my garbage sorting, doesn’t uncover any sordid details not meant for my eyes.

As Earth Day approaches, I have made my own green resolutions: to walk more, to line drying the linens and to replace all of the plastic food storage containers with glass.

What commitment can you make to honour the Earth?

Video credit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42HO2yqSAzQ

Photo credit:  www. ewswa.org

Green Lunches

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At a recent meeting of my book club, we discussed a scene from Mad Men: after enjoying a picnic at the park, the Draper family gets up and gets into the car, and Betty, left with all the clean-up, shakes out the picnic blanket and leaves all the garbage on the grass.  Gasp!

Today, after millions spent on signage to deter littering, and the efforts of environmental groups to draw attention to the afterlife of litter, we have all been trained out of dropping our lunch litter on the ground.  Do you share my visceral response to seeing garbage dropped on the ground?  I really do have a powerful physical response to seeing that.  We now pick up after ourselves and Put Litter in its Place, or whatever slogan fits you best.

The next stage of the battle, though, has to be to reduce the amount of litter that lunches generate.  I’m hoping that in 50 years’ time, when our grandkids are watching a retro-2010 sitcom set in a school, the packaging in kids’ lunches will elicit the same kind of gasp we let out when watching the flick of the picnic blanket.

At my kids’ school, there are several initiatives under way to reduce the amount of garbage generated by the daily graze.  The school offers a twice-weekly hot lunch programme from Real Food for Real Kids.  RFRK is company that serves both herbivore and omnivore hot, healthy, organic lunches, and they strive to provide as much local food as possible.  Kids bring in their own re-usable food containers and cutlery, cutting down on packaging and waste, and they bring in their own drinks.  Twice a week, the lunchbox is a breeze in the morning, and all I have to do is toss in some fruit or veggies for the recess snacks.  Litterless, easy, clean.

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Another initiative at the kids’ school is the Boomerang Lunch: all the wrapping, plastic bags, paper–all the materials that would go into the garbage after eating lunch–now comes back home in the lunchbox.  Let me tell you, this is the best thing ever to raise awareness about lunch litter.  Packaging looks lovely when the lunch box is organized just so, and the granola bar is nestled in next to the baggie of carrots.  When that wrapper and baggie come home, though, the message also comes home that we have to find alternatives to the mountains of waste we generate daily.  I am a huge fan of the Boomerang Lunch and how it makes me think twice before reaching for the individually wrapped snacks that are so temptingly convenient.

Kids are also encouraged to bring water bottles to school, instead of drink boxes and other disposable drink containers.  Our family gets only an average mark on this one.  Because the kids can still recycle their drink boxes at school, I do not feel the same kind of revulsion I feel when I think of the garbage generated by ”family-sized” boxes of individually wrapped snacks.  I hate cleaning the tupperware juice containers, with their fiddly nooks and crannies, and, germaphobe that I am, I worry that I’ve never gotten them clean enough.  I like to send a soy milk in with the son who does not get enough protein, and I send it in a drink box.  Apple juice I will send in the tupperware, but anything with pulp, or smoothies are out.  A work in progress that one.

Greening the lunch box has been a relatively effortless way to reduce and recycle, and the kids get involved when they look at the snack options in the grocery store.  Individual bags of crackers are now not an option, and we buy the bigger (and cheaper!) bulk size and put them in our own containers.  Not hard to do, easy to feel good about.