This week was sad. Seriously, could I have a lower total count? There is nothing to really say other than I will do better next week.

Most thought provoking item from an environmental perspective - I used to travel a lot for work. I spent 95% of my time on the road. I found out that if I didn't use all the little soaps and shampoo's when I was checking out they would throw them out! So I started taking them at the end of each trip. My plan is to donate them to a women's shelter or to a charity that puts together bags for the homeless.

I'm a pretty impatient person so having to boil a pot of water can seem like an eternity to me. To compound this issue I would never use a lid! What I realized is that water will boil faster with the lid on because there is a reduction in heat loss (and all kinds of other nerdy thermodynamics stuff going on).  How much faster?  Let's do a little experiment shall we.

Materials

2 pots (same size)

1 lid

1 cup of water in each pot

1 stove (pots put on same sized burner)

1 BlackBerry acting as a timer

1 adult who acts like a kid

Pot with the lid - 2 minutes 5 seconds

Pot without the lid - 2 minutes 30 seconds

So not a huge difference but keep in mind that I boiled only 1 cup of water. The difference in time when boiling a full pot of water will be more significant. And in the world of boiling water 25 seconds is a lifetime when you are standing there watching it.

How does this relate to the environment? If you are boiling water quicker you are using less energy to heat that water.

I have a love hate relationship with Earth Hour. I love that it is bringing awareness to environmental issues around the world. I love that it brings communities together. I love that it is easy to do so more people can get involved.  I love that it is a chance for Joe and I to disconnect from the world.

But I think that every hour should be Earth Hour. I hear so many people talk about participating in Earth Hour but then the rest of the year they could give two shits about the environment. Is it that it is cool to say you participated in Earth Hour? Is it that your neighbours can see if you have your lights on so you feel you have to participate? I don't get it. You will participate in Earth Hour but you won't compost in the city program that picks the compost up at the curb!

1.3 billion people have joined Earth Hour for this year. 1.3 BILLION people. Think of where our world would be if every single one of those 1.3 billion people lived every hour like it was Earth Hour (and I don't mean living in the dark).

I find myself going room to room picking up the odd thing or here or there. It's been 3 weeks in a row now that I have said that I need to tackle the basement and garage yet I haven't really started those areas. I have done a bit in the basement...a box here or there but I am not really making an effort to clean it out. My priority for Week 6 will be the basement. We are talking about finishing it so this will be a good start to that project.

Most thought provoking item from an environmental perspective - Those little stickies that mark something in a book or in a document. Why do we really need them? Because they are convenient right? They tell you right where to sign a document or remind you where a good quote is in a book. Convenience....it really is one the most detrimental impacts on our environment.

Best green story - I sorted through old magazines and I came across my copy of the Alternatives Journal where my friend Rex was on the cover for his website The Greenpages.

Today marks the end of Canada Water Week and it is also World Water Day so I have been thinking a lot about our water consumption this week. On my drive home from work yesterday I heard a discussion on 102.1 The Edge about flushing the toilet. You know the old saying "If it's yellow let it mellow...if it's brown flush it down". Growing up this was big when camping (if you had the luxury of having indoor toilets) or when at a cottage. But what about at home? Is it too gross to consider doing? I will admit that the last thing I need when I get up in the morning is seeing and smelling Joe's 'morning pee'. I guess I could take the same approach that I do when camping when having to use an old wooden outhouse. If I don't look down the hole then I don't know that there are spiders down there!

Okay so let's get personal and talk about how much water could be saved at home by letting things mellow (notice I said at home....doing this at work is ridiculously far beyond my level of crunchiness). If Monday-Friday you flushed the toilet 4 times/day and Saturday-Sunday 6 times/day that would be 32 flushes a week (1 person). If you have a standard toilet each flush is 18L (4.8gal) down the drain which means a total of 576L (152gal) per week of water used. Your annual total for water used for flushing the toilet is 29,952L (7,912gal).

Now what if you flushed the toilet 50% of the time? That would save 14,976L (3,956gal) per year per person!

Now what if you installed a low flow toilet (6L/1.6gal per flush)? That would save you 19,968L (5,275gal) per year per person!

Now what if you installed a low flow toilet (6L/1.6gal flush) and flushed 50% of the time? That would save you 24,960L (6,594gal) per year per person!

Just think about the number of people in your home and how much water you could save if you could just get past the whole looking at someone else's pee thing. I know I am thinking about it.

I started writing this post to talk about the announcement that Pepsi made this week about how they they are going to start making their bottles from 100% plant materials such as switch grass, pine bark and corn husks. They also plan on incorporating food waste from their other operations (orange peels, oat hulls, potato scraps) and will be on the market in 2012. Right now Coca Cola bottles are 30% plant material so Pepsi's announcement is a big step in the right direction but it still does not change the fact that the bottles will need to be recycled in the same way that the current PET bottles are recycled.

As I read more and more the word WATER kept jumping out at me (probably because Canada Water Week is on my brain) so I thought I would talk about the impacts on water from the production of products like Pepsi and Coke. Pop is actually up to 94% carbonated water (based on which drink it is). Coca Cola uses 2.43 litres of water to produce a 1 litre product (2008 data). That is 1 litre going into the product itself and the rest going towards the manufacturing process (rinsing, cleaning, cooling).  That is a lot of water to make a product that isn't water (but is mostly water).

Note - I can't find the data on Pepsi products and the amount of water they use to make 1 litre of pop.

I realize that there are a lot of reasons to be against large companies like Pepsi and Coke. I realize that they their operations have a heavy impact on the environment. I think that the best thing that we can all do is limit our consumption of products like this. It's better for the environment and our health. But I realize that people like pop and so in my opinion I think any changes that can be made to make these sorts of products sustainable is a step in the right direction.

I think it is also important that we all think about how much water is being used to make our food, clothing and other products we use every day. I think it is often easy to think about other resources that are used to make products because we can actually see them. We can touch the cotton or taste the wheat. But often times we can not see the water that was used.

 

** raise your hand if you have been screaming at your computer "It's called SODA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

 

I feel like I have hit that wall that you hit when you are trying to lose weight. You know where at first you are really into it, you work out every time you say you will and you really stick to your diet. Then after a few weeks you "forget" your running shoes or you just have to have that 10 1 chocolate bar. Your weight loss starts of great and you feel good...but it starts to slow down and then just stops.  This is kind of what has happened to me with my 2011 in 2011. I am continuing to make progress but not nearly at the rate I was in the beginning. It is not that I am running out of things. It is that I started with the easy areas and not I am faced with the daunting rooms like the garage and the basement. So instead of tackling those head on I am just walking around picking up random things here or there.

Here is what we left out on our doorstep this morning for the Canadian Diabetes Association to pick up. Awesomesauce!

As part of the Canada Water Week I am looking at our water consumption so last night I pulled out all of our e-bills. I am some what of an excel nerd expert so I have all the data in there so I can slice and dice it any way that I want to. I expected to see some pretty boring results...just a nice plateau over the last several years. I did not see that. Instead I saw a sharp increase in water consumption over the last 3 months. And by sharp I mean that in January our water consumption was almost double (20 m3) what our average consumption (12 m3) is. It is more in line with what our consumption is in the summer when we have to water the lawn.

See how January and February of this year are totally out of whack. I don't get it. Time to bust out my Nancy Drew skills and figure out what the heck is going on.

Canada Water Week starts today and we plan to participate. We all use water on a daily basis but when I reflect back on my life I realize how big of an impact water has had. I am not talking about how stinky or thirsty I would be without it either.

When I was part of Girl Guides I would go to Doe Lake every summer for 2 weeks of camping. We had to do a swim test on our first day and that would determine which colour level you were in. I always went for white (the highest level) and when you were in this level you got to swim to Polly's Island. This was a treat as Polly's Island held many a mystery and we had spent hours combing that island trying desperately to find Polly. I think the swim was 3km and it was fun. A herd of us girls all swimming together towards our end goal. There was no fear of what was in the water, we didn't even question things like that back then.

Canada is an amazing country and there are very few moments in time when you live in Southwestern Ontario where you can sit somewhere and have nothing but peace and quiet. I went camping in Saskatchewan when I was in grade 8 and one night we went on a canoe trip. There were moments when we out in the middle (well what seemed like the middle) of the lake and it was oh so quiet. All you could hear was the call of the loons. The lake was perfectly smooth...perfect rock skipping conditions!

I worry that B won't have moments like this in life. That there won't be secluded lakes to swim  or canoe in. There won't be that moment where you stop in the middle of a lake and you can't hear anything other than the wildlife and your own breath. That he won't have clean beaches to play on or he won't know what clean and clear water is.

There are many more memories that I have that involve our Canadian lakes and rivers. Here are some of those.

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I have been able to divert veggie scraps from our trash for many years now using our backyard composter and then our city compost system. Last week I was reading Reduce Footprints and saw a poster say that they take their veggie scraps and freeze them to make veggie stock. If there was a light bulb in my head it would have gone off. I had never even thought of doing this and yet I make turkey stock after roasting a turkey on the holidays. I use way more veggie stock than any other kind of stock so this idea is right up my alley.

Last week I started to save my veggie scraps and put them in the freezer. I wash them and let them dry and then just throw them in the container with the rest of the scraps. Now this won't reduce the amount of scraps I am sending out to the city composting program because after I make the stock I will compost the scraps. But it will allow me to get multiple uses out of our vegetables and stop buying packaged veggie stock. That means less recycling going out.

It is the small changes like this that can really make an impact. Plus it is ridiculously simple. If you have any simple ideas like this that you are doing to make your world greener please share them!

I didn't have as much time this week to find items to remove from our home. But I still made some progress! I tackled the linen closet and started on the basement. The basement is a total gold mine right now. I have been meaning to sort through things and really organize it so this will give me the push I need to just get it done. I'm in no way a pack rat but I seem to keep sentimental things. Like my old track and field jerseys and even my old spikes for my shoes. Why I need to keep these I just don't know.

Most interesting item - A key chain view finder from Canada's Wonderland from when I was like 12. So....why were perms ever "in"?

Most thought provoking item from an environmental perspective - I found a whole bunch of those little salt and pepper packets from Wendy's. I don't know why we put these in the bag when we get takeout. We have salt and pepper at home so it is not like we need them. Perhaps it is just instinct to grab them? Same goes for the plastic utensils...no need to grab them at all!

Best green story - We had a bunch of old salt bags from our water softener sitting in the basement. My first reaction was to throw them in the garbage but I looked on the bags and found a recycling symbol which is one that our region takes! Just goes to show that sometimes things you won't think can be recycled actually can be.

This weeks Change the World Wednesday challenge is to use your garbage disposal less. We don't have one...actually I am not even sure I know anyone who does! So I thought I would share how we reduce our water consumption instead. This has always been a joke in our house because Joe uses a lot more water than I do and it drives.me.crazy. But over the years he has gotten much better at remembering to turn the tap off when he isn't using the water. And frankly so have I. While I never had it running as long as he did I still had it running say while brushing my teeth. Now I turn it off until I need it.

So what else do we do around here to conserve water?

We live in an area that has watering restrictions in the summer. That means we can only water our lawn once a week. Last summer we didn't get to water at all because it always seemed to rain on our watering day. If we do water the lawn we monitor the sprinklers so we don't forget about them and so they don't over water a particular area. This spring we will be getting in ground sprinklers with timers. It is much more efficient to water your lawn this way. We also have a rain barrel that we use to water our gardens.

We don't pressure wash your driveway, sidewalk, front step or patio. We let mother nature take care of that!

I always debate about what is more eco-friendly - washing your car at home (with biodegradable soap) or going to a carwash. We do not  have an eco-carwash close to home so we wash the cars at home as we feel it is better for the environment. The thing is we don't wash them all that often. Never in the winter and then maybe once a month (if it isn't raining all that much) in the spring/summer.

We keep showers short. Not army short but we also aren't just hanging out in there with the water running. I suppose that the water could be turned off while lathering up but I know for sure that I would freeze my ass off if I did this. Having a low flow shower head really helps to reduce the amount of water we use.

We have eco appliances which means they are using less water and electricity than other appliances. Our washing machine adds the right amount of water based on the size of the load. This ensures that we aren't wasting water if we have a smaller load. For our dishwasher I only start it if it is full. I rinse all the dishes quickly which yes uses a bit more water but I have determined that this actually saves us water. If I didn't rinse the dishes and put them in the dishwasher than probably 50% of the time they come out still a bit dirty and either need to be washed by hand or put back into the dishwasher. Another big one is to wash pots and pans by hand. They take up so much room in the dishwasher that if you wash them by hand then you will find that you actually run your dishwasher far less often.

We drink tap water with a brita filter. We do not drink bottled water. We each have our own reusable water bottles that we use at work or when not at home.

We have a steam mop for the floors. Yes it uses water but I can do the entire first floor on less than 5 cups of water. It would be so much more than that if I was using a mop and bucket.

These are the basic things that we do at home to reduce our water consumption. What do you do in your home?

Earlier this week I talked about opting out of having a phone book (or 10) delivered to your home.  On Tuesday I opted out and on Thursday I came home to this.

Also - this is what concrete looks like when someone uses salt on it in the winter. Thanks previous owners. The green specs you see are what we use that is safe for concrete and the environment.

Let's talk about phone books. I was going through some cupboards as part of my 2011 in 2011 challenge and I found  8 of them in there. As I was sorting through them I realized that there is 2 per year by 3 different companies. Why is there 3 companies producing phone books??????? Do we really even need phone books anymore? The only thing I like it for is the menu's in the yellow pages.

So we will be opting out of receiving phone books from now on. If you want to opt out of receiving your phone book here are some resources to help:

Week 2 is wrapping up and I am still on a roll with finding things to get out of the house. Seriously...if you are thinking about trying this but don't really know if you can do it TRUST ME you can!  So far I have tackled my closet, B's closet, odds and sodds in the basement and some parts of the kitchen.

I made some decisions on the items that ended up in the ? pile last week. 62 of the 69 items in this category I was able to donate. 

Most interesting item - I have a ridiculous number of little pez dispensers. I do not know why I have them but they really make me laugh.

Most thought provoking item from an environmental perspective - Moving can generate a lot of waste materials. I emptied a box that was from when we moved here. It was full of paper used to wrap our breakables. Some of the paper was in good enough condition that I kept it to use for wrapping gifts but most of it I had to toss in the blue bin. At least it can be recycled but it still sucks that there isn't a better option.

Best green story - I love that there are options for donating clothing and household items. I lined up a pick up from the Canadian Diabetes Association for this month. I have right now close to 200 items going to them. Hopefully they will help someone in need or go to someone who has a use for them.