Day 164 of our Green Year: Organic Hay

Since we now live on a ranch, we need to feed horses. Thankfully, horses primarily eat two things; hay and grass. This means that it is quite easy to have the horses eating organically, making them similar to the rest of the animals in the house that eat organic dog food, cat food and bird food.

At the ranch, we are picking up more hay bales to feed the horses through the winter. This means we have to get about 200 hay bales, and that means we have to ensure that the hay bales are made without any pesticides used on them, so we can stay organic.

Thankfully, one of the farms near our ranch sells hay bales from their field, where absolutely no pesticides, herbicides or chemicals are used. That means that the horses will be eating organic food, and that also means the horses manure can be used in our garden next year without worry that it is going to hurt the plants or contaminate the soil.

It is very important to us that all our animals eat organic and healthy food as they are members of our family more than they are pets. At the ranch, the horses can rest easy that they will be having good food without pesticides in it.

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Speaking of pesticides, if you live in the United States or eat fruits and vegetables from the United States, I feel sorry for you. The Bush Administration has cut a program that regulated limits on pesticides in fruits and vegetables. The grand total cost of this program? $8 million per year! To put it in perspective how the government was apparently going broke because of this program, here is how it compares to some other big ticket items:

• It has cost $500 billion to fund the Iraq War so far. The Iraq War has been going on for five years, which means $100 billion per year or $273,972,603 per day. That is roughly 34 times what it costs to fund the pesticide program for an entire year. In fact, what it costs to fund the Iraq War for 42 minutes, the pesticide program could be funded for an entire year.
• Wall Street is getting $700 billion to help it out during the financial crisis it essentially created. That is about 87,500 times what it costs to fund the pesticide program for a year.
• The CEOs of Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae collectively made $158,000,000 as their companies were going bankrupt. Every single one of them made more in a year than the the pesticide program receives. The highest paid CEO from Merrill Lynch (bankrupt!) made more in one year than what the pesticide program receives in five!

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Things are progressing at the farm, as you will see in Our Green Year Journal, as we settle back into our routine. We have a bin for our showers again, we are setting up new dew containers and we have a nice big recycle bin in the kitchen that we will take into town once a month or so when we get food.
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Got some ideas for how we can go green? Do you want to let us know what you think of our blog? Do you have pictures of you doing green things? Send them to us at crwbaird@gmail.com and we will make sure they make it up on the blog.

Day 161 of our Green Year: Boycotting Food Chains

When we try and go green each day, we find that there are many companies we have to boycott because of their environmental record. Mostly we boycott them from what we hear from various websites like Treehugger.com. However, at various times through Our Green Year, we will address the companies in various industries that we boycott and why. Thank you to Kelly Sonora for providing us with a list of 100 companies to boycott from here. For this blog, we will address the food companies we are boycotting, if we have been boycotting them from before and why we are boycotting them.

• Aurora Organic Dairy: This is a milk supplier that is sold in Wal-Mart and Safeway. Often, they do not meet USDA organic requirements and should not be considered organic. We buy our milk locally, so this should not be a problem to avoid.
• Sara Lee: This company has had to pay $5.25 million in damages due to violations of stratospheric ozone protection regulations. We will make sure we do not buy from this company now.
• Nestle: In Deer Park, Florida, residents must conserve water but Nestle has paid a license to continue to use 1.5 million gallons of water a day for their bottling plant. They also aggressively promote bottle formula over breast milk.
  
• Monsanto: This company is a world leader in pesticide production including Agent Orange. We do not know if we have bought anything from this company but we will ensure we do not now.
• Archer Daniels Midland: This company burns peatlands in Indonesia for palm plantations and is responsible for tons of carbon dioxide. Roughly 1.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year of emissions are emitted by Archer Daniels Midland and other companies that use this practice. Again, we do not think we buy from this company, but we for sure won't be now.
• PepsiCo: Pepsi bottles tap water that could be used by those who need it, and create huge amounts of plastic bottles that many people do not recycle. Since we prefer to make our own soda when we want some, we do not buy Pepsi.
• Cadbury: Cadbury is guilty of violating the Clean Water Act on several occasions to do industrial runoff. We do not buy from this company because we buy fair-trade and organic chocolate.
• Dole: This company has been fined for contaminating water and workers in Ecuador have been exposed to several chemicals and horrible conditions. We will not be buying from this company at all.
• Heinz: This ketchup company uses palm oil in some products, which is responsible for rainforest destruction in Indonesia. We will no longer buy Heinz ketchup, or any other products from them, including vinegar.
  
• Starbucks: Despite claims that it is green, it was picked as one of the Ten Worst Greenwashers in 2003. It uses ten percent recycled paper in its hot drink cups, but in other fields of recycled content it does not do well at all. We have not gone to Starbucks for quite awhile, and that will continue now.
• Smithfield Foods: They have been fined $12.6 million for violations of the clean Water Act due to the high amounts of hazardous substances in water that the company creates. We do not believe we have bought from this company, but we will make sure we do not now.
• McDonald's: 'Raunchy Ronnies' is responsible for huge amounts of beef production that pollutes the world with methane. They also create huge amounts of unneccessary packaging. Luckily, we hate McDonald's. In fact, we would rather eat a whole pineapple and let it pass through our system than go to this burger joint.
• Tyson Foods: They have had 20 violations of the Clean Water Act at its processing plant because of how it treats wastewater. We do not know if we have bought from them, but we will not anymore.
• Coca-Cola: Coca-Cola is responsible for drying up water in a village in India, meaning that the people in the village must travel far to get water. Since we prefer to make our own soda when we want it, we do not buy Coca-Cola. This will continue.
• Burger King and Wendy's: Burger King scored 0 out of 100 when judged for reversing climate change. Wendy's is also criticized for its lack of commitment to reversing climate change as well. Also, some of their food products apparently include carcinogenic chemicals in their food. We are not big fans of fast food or burger joints, see McDonald's.
• Chiquita Brands: Banana pickers employed by this company suffer from health problems due to insecticides, with the full knowledge of the company. We will never purchase bananas from this company.
  

Coming up, we will address the retailers we will be avoiding in the future.

Thankfully, most of what we do with Our Green Year helps us avoid many of these companies already. We hope you can too, if possible.

Day 159 of our Green Year: Dealing With Horse Manure

On the ranch, there are some horses (The horses in the picture are: L-R Chubb, Cochise, Cash). As a result, those horses generate a bit of manure that has to be dealt with. All horse manure here is used as fertilizer for the organic garden. (This horse manure is gathered from the barn where it is mixed with hay, or outside where it is mixed with dirt. No sawdust is used.)
We are able to do this at the ranch because we can ferment the horse manure in a pile mixed with dirt over the course of the winter. Come spring, that manure/dirt mixture is then used in the garden to help the vegetables grow.

Now, the point should be made that you cannot do this with most dog or human feces because of what people eat and the by-products in most dog food. The horses at the ranch feed on the grass in the pasture, or on hay provided to us from local organic farmers (neither of which contains pesticides or herbicides). This is a completely organic diet that allows us to use the horse manure in the garden.

This is by no means a new idea. For centuries, farmers and those who lived off the land with a milk cow and chickens, would use their manure as a primary garden fertilizer. This stopped in the 1930s with the creation of synthetic fertilizers (many of which contain a number of ugly chemicals).

Horse manure itself is half as rich as chicken manure (no chickens here yet...) but richer in nitrogen than cow manure.

Manure should always be used as a soil amendment and not mulch, which means you do not just put the manure directly on the soil in the garden. The reason is that the raw manure will release nitrogen compounds and ammonia, which burns plant roots and will interfere with the germination of the seeds. By putting the horse manure into the dirt pile for six months, we allow it to ferment, and then about one month before the spring planting, we will put the manure in the garden and turn it over throughout the garden. This will prevent it from damaging the roots of the plants as they grow in the garden, because it is well mixed and not concentrated in one area.

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Some sad news. Despite many people going green and a general consensus that global warming is a serious problem, it appears that we are not exactly moving in the right direction in terms of dealing with global warming. While many thought that energy use would fall due to a growing understanding of the environment by individuals, as well as the economic downturn, it, in fact, grew by three percent between 2006 and 2007.

Now, to add a bit of horror to this, that amount exceeds the worst-case scenario for emissions by the Nobel Prize winning group of international scientists in 2007. As well, the forests and oceans are now sucking up lower rates of CO2 than they did in the 20th century.
If this all continues, the predicted rises in temperature and sea levels could be much, much worse than originally predicted.

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 150 of our Green Year: Bisphenol A and Our Five Month Anniversary

Well, be prepared because this is going to be a long post. Layla and I have hit our five-month anniversary with Our Green Year (yes I know its not the exact five months but 150 / 30 = 5), so we will go through a recap of our previous five months to let you know how things are going for us.

First, however, for Day 150, we will address Bisphenol A. There has been a lot of press about this recently and its effects on humans, especially infants. The sad thing is that there has been discussion about the harmful effects of Bisphenol A on humans for over 70 years, but only now are things being done. Bisphenol A (BPA) is a synthetic chemical compound used in consumer products and is classed as a hormone disruptor.
It is used in a wide variety of products and is used in the synthesis of polyesters, polysulfones and polyether ketones. It is an antioxidant in plasticizers and is a polymerization inhibitor in PVC. In polycarbonate plastic, it is clear and shatter-proof, which means it is used in baby and water bottles, sports equipment, medical devices, lenses, CDs and household electronics. Global production of BPA is about two million metric tonnes.
Studies have found that BPA is in the urine of 95 percent of adults and 93 percent of children. Infants who use liquid formula in polycarbonate bottles can consume up to 13 micrograms of BPA per kg of body weight per day. The problem is that it is a hormone disruptor, and can cause permanent changes to the genital tract, prostate weight, testosterone, breast cells, can cause cancer and can cause hyperactivity.
As a result, when we buy something that we use to store food, like reusable containers, we will make sure that Bisphenol A is not in it.

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Now, on to our five month anniversary. Here is a rundown of some of the days over the past five months and how we have done with them. We are not covering all the days here, but we will in the future. Some of these we have done well on, others we have slipped a bit on at times (hence the purpose of the Green Swear Jar).

• Day 2 - Joined Green Party: Layla is still volunteering as the secretary of the Provincial Green Party and both of us are planning on voting Green in this year's federal election.
• Day 3 - Using Cloth Bags: We still use cloth bags and have not used plastic bags in a very long time.
• Day 5 - Helping Our Ground Squirrels: Our Ground Squirrel Patrols for NCA have wrapped up for the year, but during the spring and summer we were going once a week.
• Day 8 - Changing To CFL Lights: All of our lights are CFL lights.
• Day 9 - Milk Jug Flower Pots: The milk jug flower pots proved to be a big success and we have several plants growing in them. The picture here is of a tomato plant in one of them.
• Day 14 - Washing Windows With Vinegar: We still wash our windows with vinegar and a couple of socks.
  
• Day 15 - No More Bottled Water: Bottled water has no place in our home. We prefer the taste of tap water anyways.
• Day 22 - Cooling Down The Green Way: While we live in a hot area of B.C., and while the temperature did get above 30 and 40 at times, we did not use a fan or air conditioning once throughout the summer.
• Day 23 - Using Manual Lawnmower: We have only used our manual lawn mower over the course of the summer. It was hard work at times, but overall it works great. It has not rained in awhile so there has been no need to mow lately.
• Day 25 - Building A Solar BBQ: This was a great thing for us. In all the media relations we did, they all asked about the solar cooker. We built this and have used it primarily for drying our tea leaves and other items. Since this one only gets to 250F, we are looking to improve on it so that we can use it for more.
  
• Day 26 - Five Minute Showers: We hold strong to this one and do not go past our five minutes when the alarm goes off. Even when we have people visit, we make sure they stick to the five minute rule.
• Day 27 - Drinking Green Coffee: Fair Trade and Organic Coffee is way too good not to drink. I don't think I could go to anything else, nor do I want to.
• Day 33 - Going Second Hand With Books - Only once have I bought a new book, because I could not find it anywhere else. However, we have given away most of our books to second-hand stores so that they can be reused, and will first look to libraries, the internet and second-hand stores for new reading material.
• Day 34 - No More Dryer - Throughout the Spring and Summer, we did not use a dryer at all.
• Day 37 - Unplug Power Cords - Whenever we are gone for an extended amount of time, and every night, we unplug all of our electronics.
• Day 39 - Recycling - We recycle most of what we get. In our kitchen we have bins for paper, plastic, cups, glass bottles, etc.. Some we use for items around the house, if they are not used, they are taken to the recycle depot.
• Day 40 - Organic Food - We love organic food and whenever we can (unless there are no organic alternatives) we buy organic food.
• Day 43 - Recycled Toilet Paper - All the toilet paper we have bought since this day has been recycled.
• Day 49 - Baking Bread - We still bake bread every couple weeks and store what we make in the freezer. Baked bread smells so nice!
• Day 52 - Buying Fair-Trade Chocolate - Like the fair trade coffee, this just seems to taste better so we see no reason to go back.
• Day 55 - Buying only Fresh Fish - Fresh fish just tastes better and when we do have it, we always buy it fresh now.
• Day 58 - Making Homemade Butter - About once every week or two we will make homemade butter. It tastes great and only takes 30 min to make.
• Day 61 - Using Freecycle - This is a great site and we have used it extensively to rid ourselves of many possessions in the past couple months.
• Day 69 - One Garbage Bag Challenge - We are not doing too bad with this and are down to two garbage bags per month.
• Day 75 - One Tank Challenge - So far we have been able to get by with just one tank of gas a month. Working from home makes this possible.
• Day 77 - Buying Glass Milk - We buy milk about once or twice a month and continue to buy it in the glass containers from a local supplier.
• Day 82 - Clothes Washing - We still wash our clothes by hand, even though we have been mocked for it. This provides good exercise and uses only the energy from our bodies, none from the environment.
• Day 89 - Walking Each Day - Every day, Layla and I go for a walk to get fresh food for the day. This is something we enjoy and will continue to do.
• Day 96 - Reducing Possessions -While some have questioned on this, we are committed to lowering our possessions. We are doing well with it and have rid ourselves of most of our pots, pans, dishes and books. We have also found a new home for our table, bookcases, desks, old chairs, spare bed set and patio furniture.
• Day 100 -Buying Buffalo Meat - Since this day, we have not bought any beef. We have had some ham, turkey and chicken; however, we are limiting those now, including deli meats. We have committed to eating less meat, but not going vegan, and we are now structuring the majority our suppers, lunches and dinners to be meat-free (meat-free meals will consist of no chicken, turkey, buffalo, elk, ham and fish). We had some trouble with this one, and some slip ups with deli meat, but that is what the green swear jar is for.
• Day 102 - Carbon Offsetting - We bought a offset certificate from CarbonFund.org, and we will continue to do so with the money from our green swear jar.
• Day 103 - No More Chips - We have not bought any chips since this day, and have chosen instead to make pita chips when we get the craving for some.
  

Like I said, we have not covered all the days here, but as we go forward in Our Green Year we will. For the days from 103 to now, those will be covered in later months as we have done here.
It has been great doing this and we feel that we are healthier for it from the toxins we are taking out of our homes, lives and bodies. We could not imagine eating fast food or processed food when we can have organic and fresh food.

In all, we have helped spread the word, give money to, or joined the following charities and environmental groups: WWF, Greenpeace, FreeRice, WE Campaign, Think Water, CarbonFund, HappyFrog, Great Ape Project, Nature Challenge, Freecycle, Red Dot Campaign, NCA, West Kootenay Forest Education Fund, Green Party of BC, TreeNation, Eat Well Guide, Eco-Libris, 350 Challenge and Trees for the Future.

As well, we have appeared in several media including three newspapers (including our provincial newspaper), three radio stations, multiple blogs (it should be noted most are good but a couple have been less than flattering, but that's what happens when you try something new), one TV interview and one magazine. On the right, is a picture of two of the newspapers on our "Wall of Fame."

So, there you have it, a brief guide on how we are doing with some of our blogs :) Stay tuned in the next seven months!

Day 148 of our Green Year: Choosing Fair Trade Sugar

This past weekend, we were watching the Documentary Channel and we came across a documentary called The Price of Sugar. The documentary is about the exploitation of Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic, who are involved with the production of sugar and the efforts of Father Christopher Hartley to fix the situation. The documentary shows the horrible working conditions of the Haitians on the sugarcane plantation and the control held by the Vicini family over the plantation, and the country.

This is by no means the only place where workers are mistreated while they cut sugarcane. The truth is that the sugar that we get on our table is often tainted by the misery of those who cut it. The workers receive very little money, most of the food they eat is sugarcane and they suffer severe punishment and treatment as they work long hours.

Like we did with coffee, Layla and I came to the decision that if we are going to have sugar for tea, baking and coffee, then we are going to have sugar that is fair-trade and organic. Thankfully, we found out that our local store carries several different brands of organic and fair trade sugar, including white, brown and icing. Therefore, from now on it is organic and fair trade sugar for us. This not only helps the farmers who make the fair trade sugar, but it helps the environment as well since no pesticides are used and the sugar cane is grown in an organic manner.

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Out for our walk today, we picked up another disposable pop cup, a plastic knife, some wrappers and a chip bag. We have included a photo taken yesterday of the garbage that we found during our walk.

There was less garbage there today, but we imagine the increase in garbage yesterday was due to the fact it was following the weekend here.
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Since the election is raging here in Canada, we felt the need to address something that we heard about on the news recently regarding the Canada Election 2008. As we know, the NDP, PC and Liberals all travel across the country on chartered jets. We found it odd they did this considering that they touted a green message. However, we soon found out that the Liberals and NDP bought carbon offsets for their plane travel, while the Conservatives did not.
The problem is that the Conservatives criticized the Liberals for having an older plane that emitted more emissions than the newer Conservative plane. Of course, while criticizing the Liberals, they left out the fact that the Liberals bought carbon offsets for their plane travel, and paid more for it. The Conservatives have refused to buy carbon offsets and that begs the question of why. The nearest we can understand, is that if the Conservatives were to buy carbon offsets, it would be an admission that CO2 from planes, vehicles and industry causes global warming. Therefore, not purchasing carbon offsets states that the platform of the Conservatives is that CO2 is not an immediate problem (as can be seen by their less-than stellar environmental record). Instead, they choose to criticize others who have bought carbon offsets, while ignoring the problem of their own emissions altogether. Just another bit of the pot calling the kettle black in the Canada Election 2008