Day 283 of our Green Year: Sustainable Shrimp

We mentioned yesterday that we will be using FishPhone, the service that allows you to text to find out if the fish you are buying is sustainable or not.
Well today, we are going green with the ocean once more and this time it has to do with shrimp. Shrimp are a very important part of the food chain in the ocean, but they are being depleted in amazing numbers due to overfishing.
As a result, Layla and I will be more sustainable with the shrimp we buy. We will not buy farm raised shrimp from overseas because it can be pumped full of artificial feed and antibiotics. We will be buying farm raised shrimp from our own country though as there are stricter laws regarding them. We will also only buy organic shrimp, which we have found at our local grocery store. On top of that, we will also only buy shrimp on occasion and will severely limit how much we buy to once a month or less so we do not take too much from the ocean or shrimp farms.

Thank you to Wandering Coyote who provided us with a great list of green things you can do located here.

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Day 262 of our Green Year: Making Our Own Mouthwash

Typically when someone needs mouthwash, they buy Scope. However, Scope has a lot of ingredients in it that are very hard to pronounce. According to some studies, dental experts do not believe that mouthwash that you buy offers very many benefits beyond what you would get from flossing and brushing your teeth. Mouthwash that you buy does not get rid of bad breath, it only masks it. On top of that, a lot of mouthwash does not come in renewable plastic bottles, thereby contributing more to the landfills.

Instead of doing this, Layla and I are going to try making our own mouthwash. We don't usually buy mouthwash, but some people at our home do and we want to offer them an alternative.

There are several recipes you can try to make your own mouthwash, courtesy of Planet Green.

Homemade Mint Mouthwash
2 oz filtered water
1/4 tsp baking soda or sea salt
1 drop of pure peppermint oil

Method:
Mix all of the ingredients together and swish like you normally would. This is only for one serving. Make as much or as little as you want.

Homemade Rosemary-Mint Mouthwash
2 1/2 cups filtered water
1 tsp fresh organic mint leaves
1 tsp organic rosemary leaves
1 tsp anise seeds

Method:

1. Boil the water, add herbs and seeds, and infuse for 20 minutes.
2. Let the liquid cool. Strain it and use it to gargle. This amount is enough to last about a week.

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Day 243 of our Green Year: Navy Showers

Yesterday, Layla and I decided to pay more attention to our water footprint. This was done because while global warming is a serious problem, a lack of available water could become just as, or more serious in the future.

Today, we take a big step towards conserving water and it is a step that most people may not be willing to do. Months ago, we chose to have only five minute showers, well while we may be in the shower for five minutes still, we won't be using five minutes worth of water. The reason for this is because we are now going to practice using navy showers for at least half our showers.

What is a navy shower? Well, since water is so scarce on ships and has to be conserved, navy showers are practiced. It involves using the water to get yourself covered in water and then turning the water off while you lather yourself up with soap. Once you are covered in soap and have shampoo in your hair, you turn the water back on and rinse yourself off.

This is a big adjustment but here at the ranch, we get our water from a well, so water conservation is incredibly important and our hot showers are a sacrifice we are willing to make.
We will continue to collect shower water each time we shower, and we will continue to limit how long we stand in the shower to five minutes or under.

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Well we passed 8,000 hits today! With two days ago being our eighth month anniversary, that means we are averaging 1,000 hits per month. We were able to get 1,000 hits in just 28 days this time. Thanks everyone for coming out!

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While doing research for a book today, I was looking for quotes and came across this one. It is a Native American quote and I think it explains what is really important perfectly.

Only after the last tree has been cut down,
only after the last river has ben poisoned,
only after the last fish has been caught,
only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.

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Day 239 of our Green Year: Natural Decorations

Christmas is the time of year for two main colors, red and green. Well, green is more than just a color during the Christmas season, it is also a way of life. So far this Christmas season, Layla and I have limited what we buy, stuck mainly to local retailers and bought green gifts for each other. The gifts are wrapped in old newspapers, bags and more and we have a fake tree (although a real tree from the right provider can be better than a fake tree).

For our next Christmas green task, we are choosing to scale back our decorations, buy no new decorations and if we want a new decoration, we use a natural decoration.

A few weeks ago, one of our readers told us that they collect old pine branches, leaves and more from the yard, and then use those to make decorations for the house. This is a great ideas because it allows you to use what is already outside ready for use, and it helps give your home a natural feel to it.

As we mentioned, other than solar lights, we are not buying any decorations this year. There are some old decorations here and we will recycle those, and we are going to begin to see the types of natural decorations we can create using branches, leaves and pine cones. There are many tips on the net for how to do this, and all it takes is a bit of crafting skill (something Layla has in abundance). We will let you know how it goes.

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Do you have a tip for us?
Do you have a picture of yourself going green?
Tell us your story about going green!
E-mail us at craigbaird@wildmail.com

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We need your help! Our blog has been nominated for two different awards and we need you (if you want to of course) to vote for us to help raise our profile and spread the message of going green.

Please register and vote at BlogNetAwards and also vote at Wellsphere

Day 170 of our Green Year: Making Preserves

The large organic garden here means that there are a lot of vegetables to eat throughout the winter. Many are frozen in the freezer downstairs, but some are not. To make sure they last and do not rot, it is important to use a time honored method for storing food; making preserves.

Hence, that is what today entailed. Through the process of canning the preserves, notably tomatoes, carrots, pickles and more, and then boiling them in a pot and canning tray to create a suction seal, you can have those great preserves days, weeks, months and even years down the road!

It is a great way to reduce your consumption at the grocery store because you won't have to buy those vegetables for quite awhile. With each harvest season that goes by, you add to your catalog of canned materials. It is a very green method because you are storing food so that it is not wasted and can be eaten later, you are not buying from a grocery store and instead living off the land for your vegetables, and beyond the process of creating the suction seal with boiling water, the process uses no energy to store, unlike when you freeze vegetables.

If you can, give canning a try. It is a very easy process and you can enjoy those carrots, tomatoes, corn and more even a year or two down the road.

Included here is a picture of the cans that we have downstairs in the cold room.

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If you have any photos of you doing canning, let us know and we will put it up. Just send us the photo to craigbaird@wildmail.com.

Day 160 of our Green Year: Joining AmIGreenOrNot?

We are always ready to join online communities that help spread green ideas because Layla and I are by no means experts in going green. We are learning as we go and we are always looking for help in how to go green from those who are going green as well.

This is what has led us to join the online community of AmIGreenOrNot.com, which was created in May to increase awareness, share ideas and collectively gain a richer understanding of what it really means to be green. The website lists their objectives as:

1. To provide a place where people, groups, businesses and organizations from the around the world can share and promote green lifestyles and direct feedback from their peers.
2. To harness the wisdom of crowds as a way to accumulate viewer opinions, compare one's green lifestyle with another and to help identify who among us is really green.

We both think this is a great idea and have joined to not only help promote our message of going green every single day for a year, but to find out some useful green tips from others.
The website also has several blogs that list ways to go green for individuals and groups. Since we feel this is a great site, we want to spread that message for Day 160 of our Green Year.

Day 157 of our Green Year: Sharing Resources

As we mentioned yesterday, we moved to be closer to family. However, in our move we kept Our Green Year in mind, and that shows in where we are moving.
We are going to be living on a ranch, with others that we will be sharing the property with. The reason we decided to do this is because we feel that it will be better to share resources with others, than try and go green alone. Communes were common in the 1960s because everyone was able to live a natural lifestyle, with help from those around them (albeit not all worked out). This is not quite a commune, but we will be following the philosophy of going green together and helping each other.

The ranch is 20 km from the nearest town so that will cause us to change our daily walk to the store. Now, we will be driving to the store once a week, where we will park and do all the errands we need to in town. At the end of each month, we will be buying carbon offsets from CarbonFund.org to offset our travels. However, because of the mileage of our car we should be able to still go on only one tank of gas a month. Some other great points of this ranch include:

• Large organic garden, much bigger than what we had in our former home.
• Surrounded by farmers that we can get eggs from to support the local economy.
• Water comes from a well, so water conservation is incredibly important

In our former home, Layla and I rented so we were very limited in what we could do with the house to go green. However, here we can not only go green on the ranch, we can go green on the house. Plans are already in place to begin putting in solar panels on the house, and Layla and I are going to begin work on a personal wind turbine to provide power.

In a world of uncertain economic times and growing distances between each other, sharing resources and working together is very important and very needed.

Day 126 of our Green Year: Greening The World With Facebook

Layla and I are self-described Facebook-aholics. We love it and not a day goes by that we don't log on a few times. We even have a Facebook group for Our Green Year, and you can join it if you want, just click the link on the side of this webpage.

Thankfully, Facebook also helps us go green, beyond spreading our green message that is. They do this through a variety of applications that allow you to help others go green through the magic of Facebook, clicking and advertising.

One such application is the Green my Vino application from Village Green Energy. When this application is added to an application, friends can send other friends gifts. For each gift they send, a pledge is made to wineries in northern California that grow wine in methods that use renewable energy.

SunChips has an application that for every person who adds it, they donate $1 towards the goal of $50,000 that will be used to plant trees in Greensburg, Kansas, which had most of its trees destroyed in a tornado.

Lastly, there is (lil) Green Patch, which is an application that saves the rainforest. Members get a green rectangle on their Facebook page that they can decorate with cute garden people, mushrooms and flowers and with each addition, money goes from sponsors to save the rainforest. So far, 29,259,567 square feet of rainforest has been saved.

Those are just a few of the applications that are used on Facebook to make the world a greener place. Do you know of some more? Let us know!

Day 122 of our Green Year: Enjoying cold food

Layla and I have moved beyond eating meat for the most part. We still have bison burgers on occasion, but it is becoming rare. Well, after we stopped using our microwave because it was hooked up to a faulty breaker, we began to realize that we don't need to use it that much in reality.

It was through this that Layla and I discovered the joy of cold food. This is not to say that we will be eating cold steaks by any means, but that we are going to be planning some of our dinners, lunches and even breakfasts to be cold. Why you ask? To save energy.

Much of what we do here is to save energy. We want to be able to use as little energy as possible, which means that using no energy to make our food helps. We may go full steam ahead on the Raw Food Craze, but it is too soon to tell. Instead we will be looking at what we eat and determining if we can make something to eat that does not use energy.

Instead of porridge, we can have cold cereal, a grapefruit or fruit.
Instead of making soup for lunch, can have a sandwich.
Instead of cooking a large dinner, make a large platter with cold deli meat on it.

Of course, this does not mean we will always eat cold meals, but if we can commit to two or three days a week of cold food, that will help lower our energy costs and our carbon footprint as a result.
There is nothing wrong with cold food, especially when it is 38 Celsius where we live in the summer.

On a different note, Layla and I were recognized in the grocery store today because of our TV interview. It was a very cool experience, especially considering we were asked a bunch of green question. That is essentially the reason we do this, to help spread the word of going green!

Day 116 of our Green Year: Visiting Farmer's Markets

In our town, every Saturday, there is a large farmer's market that goes on. Here you will find nearly anything you could want, from honey and mittens to beef and paintings. It is a great place to visit and as part of Our Green Year, Layla and I will be visiting the Farmer's Market tomorrow for a variety of reasons that apply to our green initiative.

1. It supports local producers of everything from fruit and meat to honey and painters. We can support them and provide them with the ability to work their craft. This then helps support the local community as well.

2. The food is organic and natural. You can get all sorts of food here without having to worry about pesticides or any other type of harmful ingredients on the food.

3. We get exercise by walking to the farmer's market. Why drive there when you can enjoy a beautiful day?

4. We establish community connections. Too often people do not know those who live in their community. Therefore, we will be establishing connections with our community by integrating and interacting with those who make up the community. It is a great way to get to know your neighbors.

The farmer's market is a great place to be green and meet others who want to be green.

Also, Layla and I recently appeared in Organic Lifestyle Magazine, (link on the right hand side of page). It was great to help spread our 10 tips for living green and we are happy to be a regular feature now. Check out the magazine at http://www.greenmagazines.com/

Day 113 of our Green Year: Hiking Green

About a month and a half ago, Layla and I took part in the Mount Roberts hike, a tradition in our small town. It involved hiking to the Canadian flag on top of the mountain over the course of a day. It was a long and difficult hike, but it was a lot of fun and we really enjoyed it. In fact, we have always enjoyed hiking and while hiking is a very green thing to do, it can be even greener, hence why Layla and I are committing to be very green with our hiking beyond the 'leave only footprints' methodology.

The first thing we will be doing is buying second hand equipment, rather than the new and pricey equipment available through many retailers. We will do this because then we can help someone else re-use something, instead of having it thrown into the landfill.

The second thing we will be doing is ensuring we only hike on prescribed trails. There will be no hiking through areas that we are not supposed to because we may inadvertently be damaging sensitive plant species by walking where we should not.

The third thing we will be doing is packing lunches for hikes in reusable containers at all times. That way we do not create any garbage, we do not take away from the environment to make one-use only plastic wrap and we help keep the world a bit greener.

Lastly, we will only take pictures in the wilderness and nothing else. There will be no picking flowers or anything else while we are in the forest.

Hiking is very green, but it is possible to go even greener when you are hiking out there, and Layla and I will be doing that to help us become even greener when we do something we love.

Day 108 of our Green Year: Recycling At The Movies

Today, Layla and I went to our first movie in two years; Kung Fu Panda. It was a really great movie, and the best part of it is that we went in there with nothing and came out with a variety of items that we will be reusing at our home.

We are not big on going to the movies, we actually prefer watching them at home or online. However, as we are partly on vacation, we decided it would be good to go see a movie we have both wanted to see, while seeing if we could be green about it.

1. Receipts - The receipts of the movies will be re-used as to-do lists, bookmarks and more.
2. Popcorn Tub - It is not the healthiest thing to eat, it is not something local but its hard to go to the movies and not have one. We are using the reusable tub as a pot for plants at our home. It is a good size and will work perfectly.
3. Drink cups - The drink cups we also have will be re-used as flower pots as well, or anything else we may need for storage once they are cleaned.

As you can see, going to the movies can be just like camping; leaving only footprints. You can recycle what you get, and you can enjoy a great movie in the process.

Also, Layla and I hit 3,000 hits today and are going strong. That means we have a daily hit total of about 27 hits over the course of our 108 days. Thank you to everyone who has helped us get to this point and we are going strong and hope to keep getting more and more hits every day to spread the green message.

If you want to talk green, drop us a line at crwbaird@gmail.com. If you want us to speak to a class or anything like that, remotely or in person, let us know. Layla and I are very committed to teaching others about going green and can help out in any way we can.

Day 78 of our Green Year: Dealing With Colds

Cold season isn't here, but we do need to start thinking about how to deal with it when it comes. As part of Our Green Year, we have decided that if we are to get a cold, we will deal with it naturally. There are far too many drugs out in the environment right now and it is starting to have a major effect on ourselves and our environment. Recently, CNN reported that prescription drugs were found in the drinking water of about 41 million Americans!

First, with any sickness, it is often a good idea to simply have some green tea. Green tea is one of the best aids to your immune system that you can find on the market. Just make sure it is organic and fair-trade tea so you can keep your mind clear of guilt.

You need to act fast when you have a cold, it will start with a sore throat and the best way to deal with that is gargling with some salt water. The salt will actually dry and clear out the infection. As well, putting some honey in your green tea can help a lot with inflammation.

If you have a sinus infection, then you can easily get rid of it, albeit in an uncomfortable manner, with a Netti pot that will irrigate your nose with salt water. Doing this, even when you don't have a sinus infection, can reduce the amount of particles you have in your nose.

If you have a rash, use lavender oil and vitamin E lotion to calm down the rashes. You can also use eucalyptus oil to open up your sinuses so you breathe a bit better. Peppermint oil on the temples can help headaches as well.

Trying to eat a balanced diet, having good hygiene and keeping healthy is the best thing you can do to prevent colds and other health problems. Being proactive with your body can save you a lot of trouble down the road.

As well, if you would like to read a fictional story that puts the belief that global warming is not a problem into prospective, read this story here If you want a copy of the story, you can also e-mail me and I will be happy to send it to you.

Day 77 of our Green Year: Glass Milk

Layla and I have decided to go old school with our milk by eliminating plastic milk jugs, which we have already used to make pots for plants, by buying milk in glass containers. We had not seen these in awhile, abut after going to the grocery store recently, we found milk in glass containers that is actually made right in the Interior of British Columbia! It is from Dutchman Dairy out of Sicamous BC.

Plastic takes a lot of mining and a lot of work to make, while glass is much, much easier to craft and better for the environment. After you use the milk glass container, you can then use it for so many different uses. Plus they look great.

Now, these are more expensive, but as Layla and I have found out, going green and organic is not cheap. Our grocery bill has gone up, but so has our health. After going weeks of only organic local food, we are finding that we are feeling healthier and happier. Even after Our Green Year is over, we will not be going back on organic and local, it is just too good. Buying everything locally makes sense as well because of high costs for food these days. Everything is going up in price because everything needs to be transported, which takes gas. We have noticed that our eggs have doubled in price, it is amazing to think of how quickly things are changing.

Over the course of Our Green Year, almost three full months in, we have been watching the news and seeing the changes that are occurring. High costs abound, the stock market tumbles, and the world itself is changing. Is it changing for the better? Possibly. People are driving less, changing their habits and thereby changing the world. Time magazine actually had an excellent article about the ten good things about $4 gas. Located here

The world we knew of the past is changing. Gone are the days of cheap oil, traveling long distances and even discount airfare. It has been said that our average meal travels 1,500 km in total for all the ingredients before it gets to our plate. As Layla and I are finding out, there is no reason for that. You can get everything you need within your own area, province or state. We don't worry about our dogs getting sick by tainted grain because we buy local dog food, we don't worry about chemicals in fish because we don't buy fish from China. Our vegetables are organic without pesticides, we make our own butter, bread, yogurt and our pop.

It has crossed my mind whether or not what we are doing is changing the world, and based on the amount of people who visit our site on a daily basis, maybe it is. However, what I do know for sure is that Our Green Year is changing the lives of Layla and I, and it is doing it for the better.

So, here is to another 270+ days in the future!