TED Tuesday: How food might be killing your kids

Bravo to chef Jamie Oliver for ranting, his passion and helping families learn how to feed their family food for success!



Tracy Lydiatt - B.Sc, M.Sc
The Green Families Guru

p.s. Remember you can do this, it all starts with a first step and it will last a lifetime

Leading by example is a scary thing...

A little inspiration from my weekend trip to Denmark, Western Australia.....sometimes we have no easy and quick numbers to justify the costs, to outline the benefits, to calm our partner's fears/doubts about making changes to the household, to answer our friend's inquiries and to quiet the critic's voice in our head!

Sometimes the only thing we can really do is lead by example and have a little faith.

This is what courage means to me.

Tracy Lydiatt - B.Sc, M.Sc
The Green Families Guru
p.s. Remember you can do this, it begins with one step and lasts a lifetime
http://www.howgreenismyfamilynow.com

45,000 reasons to swap your choco eggs

Happy Easter everyone! In addition to the Christian religious significance to the Easter Holiday, many families plan easter egg hunts and fun spring related activities and crafts for their kids.  Chocolate has become a large part of the North American Easter tradition.

As consumers, we are able to vote with our wallets and families interested in "greening up their act" have several essential fundamentals to consider.  One of them is the social aspect of our consumer choices.  


So what does this have to do with Easter? C-H-O-C-O-L-A-T-E!!! YUM.  You can change lives by investing in buying Fair Trade chocolate this Easter.  It is typically 15-30% more expensive than conventional choices but you can use it as an adult treat and focus on crafts for your kids this Easter.   When I buy fair trade chocolate bars - they range in price from $4.00 to $7.00 for a 100g to 150g (3.5oz to 5.3oz).  I actually find they taste better and the extra few dollars I would have in my pocket is one take out tea/coffee a day out of my life.  A worthy exchange of extra change for the value it produces.  If you are new to the Fairtrade idea the following is some information for you and an inspiring video!

From the Fairtrade website
Fairtrade is about better prices, decent working conditions, local sustainability, and fair terms of trade for farmers and workers in the developing world. By requiring companies to pay sustainable prices, Fairtrade addresses the injustices of conventional trade, which traditionally discriminates against the poorest, weakest producers. It enables them to improve their position and have more control over their lives.

Even though we don't intentionally mean to, sometimes our choices place barriers in the way of other people so they are unable to meet their needs.  Those needs might be something so simple that we often take for granted such as clean drinking water, fair wages, and access to education for our children.  It's very important to create conditions so people can meet their basic human needs. If they are unable to meet their basic needs, they will be solely focused on survival, unable to contribute any of their gifts to the world and will often have a much lower quality of life for themselves and their children.

Here's 45,000 reasons to consider switching to Fair Trade chocolate



In Australia/NZ buy your Fairtrade Easter treats at:
http://www.chocolatier.com.au/ourstores/OurStores.htm
www.lindsayandedmunds.com.au
http://www.lighthouse-ventures.com
http://www.aldi.com.au/ 
http://www.alterecopacific.com/wheretobuy.html 
http://cocolo.com.au/stockists/ 
http://www.oxfamshop.org.au/retail 

In USA and Canada buy your Fairtrade Easter Treats from:
http://www.fairtradefederation.org/
http://www.transfairusa.org/
http://www.equalexchange.coop/
http://www.transfair.ca/ 
http://www.tenthousandvillages.ca/cgi-bin/category.cgi?item=pageFairTrade1&type=store
 
Tracy Lydiatt - B.Sc, M.Sc
The Green Families Guru
p.s. Remember you can do this, it start with one step and lasts a lifetime

Help for the Diaper Conundrum

Did you know your little sweetheart will go through 8,000 to 10,000 diapers (nappies) before they become toilet trained?

Did you know that we throw away an average of 18 Billion disposable diapers a year in the United States alone?

That's a whole lot of waste going straight to garage dumps and how long does it take for a diaper to break down?  A LONG TIME and what does it break down into? As well, the more waste we create, the more space we need to dispose of it (unless it's incinerated which just adds harmful emissions to the environment) so throwing these diapers out causes a lot of problems. 

Traditional disposable diapers contain all or some of the following:

• Materials such as paper, wood cellulose and cotton that have been bleached using chlorine
• Absorbent material inside the diaper: Sodium Polyacrylate
• Plastics found in the fasting tabs and bonded to the paper to help keep the "wetness away from baby's skin"
• Chemical based perfumes and lotions 

If you are a family with young children trying to green up your act, I'm sure you've spent a considerable amount of time thinking about this topic.  A friend of mine, Ben Kneppers of Edge Environment in Sydney, Australia recently published an article about the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) he did comparing two kinds of diapers that I thought might be of interest to you.  The full article is here.

Comparative Life Cycle Analysis for Disposable Diapers (Nappies) vs. Reusable Diapers

The three options analysed:

1. Disposable Nappies
2. Reusable Nappies with an efficient washing machine, and 
3. Reusable Nappies with a less-efficient washing machine. 

Note that other nappy options exist (e.g. compostable and alternative material nappies) but due to limitations in the scope of the study these three most common options were selected.

Within the LCA system - the more "eco-points" a product has, the higher the impact. Here were the results of the study:
3rd place:  1.52 eco-points over the 2.5 year life span (of the child using diapers) is the disposable nappy.
2nd place: 0.74 eco-points is the reusable nappy with a less efficient washing machine

1st place: 0.55 eco-points is the reusable nappy with the efficient washing machine as our most environmentally preferable option

Ben states:
The main areas responsible for impact in the life of the disposable nappies were the high material inputs, which used a significant amount of energy, water, produced a lot of waste emissions, and made a large impact on global warming. The main issue for the reusable nappy is water consumption. As previously mentioned, cotton is a water intensive crop and, in addition to the water used for washing, this led to the impact on water scarcity impact coming out much greater than the disposable nappies. 
 
So stick to reusable cloth diapers as much as you can, line dry where possible and if you can, save up for the most energy efficient washing machine when yours kicks the bucket!



Tracy Lydiatt - B.Sc, M.Sc
The Green Families Guru
p.s. Remember you can do this, it start with one step and it lasts a lifetime

Where have all the boys gone?

I'm on a roll lately in regards to chemicals and I think this is a short documentary EVERY parent should see. It's called "The Disappearing Male" and was produced by Canadian Broadcast Corporation for Doc Zone.



It's less than 1hr and discusses in depth our rapid evolution (by losing the male species) of our human race.  Sounds like a crazy sci-fi movie? Watch and find out for yourself!

As an integral part of greening your family, it's very important to identify and eliminate the use of man-made chemicals from your home. Later posts will talk about how to do this and where these chemicals are even found.  For now though, please watch and share with any concerned friends or family.

Tracy Lydiatt - B.Sc, M.Sc
The Green Families Guru
p.s. Remember you can do this, it all starts with a first step and it will last a lifetime