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1. Diapers: …and not just the cloth ones. Did you know that, on average, a baby will go through about six thousand diapers before they’re potty trained? Well, a company called ‘Knowaste’ makes disposable diapers that can be recycled.
2. Soap: That’s right — soap! A non profit organization called ‘Clean the World’ collects leftover soap and shampoo from hotels and donates it to those in need.
3. Caskets: This one nearly blew my mind yesterday and, you know, I don’t know why cause you’d think this was a no-brainer: Why not be buried in something that will easily biodegrade or is made from recycled materials? Seems silly not too, but I suppose that’s just my opinion. And besides being eco-friendly, it’s also much less expensive, too!
4. Running shoes: I am a big gym-goer so I own several pairs of running shoes, cross trainers, ones with shock absorbtion, etc. When you’re done with running shoes that are still in relatively good shape, they can be donated to the less fortunate. But the thing is, for me anyway, they’re so incredibly pricey that you can be sure that I use them until they can no longer be worn. The good news is, they can still be made into building materials. Check out RecycledRunners.com to find out where you can bring your old runners.

Uh oh! Looks like my time outside yesterday left me sunburnt — entirely my fault, of course, as I didn’t update my sunscreen application as the day went on. So now here I am with hideous white stripes on my back where my tank top was and bright red patches everywhere else the sun hit. I partially blame the unusually nice weather in mid September for my screw up. Shouldn’t it be Fall right now? I haven’t even broken out my sweaters yet.

Don’t have an aloe plant? Here are some other around-the-house tips for treating a sunburn without having to invest in nasty chemicals or lotions. They worked very well for me, try them out yourself!

• Use honey as a salve — put a healthy smear of it onto the burnt areas. It apparently helps ease the pain and helps to encourage the healing process.
• Liquify some potatoes. I know, sounds weird, right? But potato paste can be applied to the sunburn and when it dries, it sucks all the excess moisture (what’s keeping it hot and burning) out of your skin.

These more eco-friendly ways to treat a sunburn have the added benefit of having great odds of being in your home just when you need them. I don’t always have pain killers or burn spray in my medicine cabinet, but 99% of the time I have potatoes!

After chatting with staff about the spa’s commitment to the environment, I took the opportunity to check out what the facility had to offer first hand. Sorry, I’ve got no pictures for you as (I should have known, of course) the spa has strict rules against phones and cameras on site.

I was quite impressed! While the spa lost a few points for handing out bottled water to guests and two clean towels each, I was very impressed by their floor to ceiling windows for all natural lighting during the day and their dim indoor lighting and bright outdoor solar lighting at night.

Their brochures were all packed to the brim with informatiton on recycled paper, the toilets were all low flush and used greywater, and all of the steam rooms and saunas were run on timers as to not unnecessarily waste energy and electricity.

Everywhere you looked their were bins seperated into waste, paper, plastic, and food (for composting) — all done in very tasteful ways to incorporate it into the theme of the spa.

A lot of the spa was outdoors using nature instead of building facilites — like the hammocks and chair swings — all of which were tethered to trees instead of having a separate building for those who wish to lounge.

An outdoor fireplace stood in the middle of the outdoor pool area instead of a wasteful electric fireplace like I’ve seen in so many other public buildings.

And to top off everything, there were rainwater collection barrels scattered throughout the lot — a great use of all that space! They use the rainwater that’s collected to water the plants. Perfect.

Before this experiment I would have never noticed any of these things, I’m sure — but I’m glad I did. I’m definitely becoming more eco-concious and am certainly aware now that in a facility like that, if there’s no attempt at sustainable development and operation, it could easily be a hugely wasteful place! I was glad to see Le Nordik make such a great effort to not only be as eco-friendly as possible, but to make sure that their clients aware of these efforts, too.

Kudos, Le Nordik!

On a personal note, I highly recommend spending a day at this place — it’s beautiful! And there’s nothing like a steam bath and then a jump in a 4 degree (celcius) water fall to make you feel… alive (and so, socold)!

Today while in Chelsea, Quebec on a top secret mission, I’m scheduled to visit the nice folks at Le Nordik Nature Spa and sit down and chat about their promise to act responsibly towards the environment through ‘eco-friendly actions’.

Here are some of their eco commitments:

• Recuperation of all recyclable material for reuse
• Recycling of paper, plastic and other materials
• Recycling of waste water to be reused in flushing systems
• Energy and electricity management with timers and software systems
• Recuperation of rain water to be used for watering the plants
• Printing on recycled paper for certain documents
• Use of renewable energy

And soon they’ve promised that they will be composting of plant and natural based waste and using geothermy throughout each of their buildings.

I’m hoping to talk to them about what motivated them to make this commitment to the environment and sustainable development as well as, of course, checking out what their facilities look like! I’ve never been there and I’m glad that’s about to change. And maybe we’ll become great friends! I could really use some good friends with a spa, heh. I’m looking forward to meeting you and chatting about your top notch eco-friendly spa, Le Nordik!

I’ll be trying out mobile blogging on location again so stay tuned for pictures and tidbits from my sit down with Le Nordik!

You know, I’m seeing this news story all over the place today and I’m thinking long and hard about it. Should Drive-Thru restaurants consider bicycles a worthy mode of transportation?

The conclusion I’ve come to is this: it’s being said often in these type of news stories that letting bicycles through increases the likeliness of accidents. But I wonder — how fast are you driving through a drive-thru? I should think that you wouldn’t be driving fast enough to run over a cyclist, are you? And don’t the people who take your order tell you when you can drive up to the window? I don’t drive myself, but I’m pretty sure that’s how the routine goes, right?

And like a lot of these news stories have suggested, there are many drive-thru restaurants that have refused to serve cyclists recently that also claim to be making an effort to be more lifestyle and eco-friendly — including Burgerville (a Pacific Northwest fast food place that composts, uses wind power, recycles its fresh fry oil into biodiesel, and has signs up that say “Drive Less, Save More” — hrmmm.

Now I’d like to know what you think! Do you think it’s too dangerous to let cyclists use drive-thru windows or do you think it’s a bunch of hooey?

Leave me a comment!

Renovo has just put out a series of handcrafted wooden bikes. Two thousand dollar handcrafted wooden bikes, I may add. Renovo, a family-owned business, has a wide variety of eco-friendly bike options including walnut, cedar, hickory, and bamboo. A bike made out of wood? Hrmm.

A few years ago I had an accident that nearly destroyed my right knee. I walked with crutches for months and a cane for more than a year after the accident. That being said, the idea of riding on a bicycle freaks me out a little bit. I have a hard time stepping off the last step of the bus onto the curb let alone trying to stop a speeding bike at full tilt. And a wooden bicycle? I’m going to have to trust that they can be just as good as standard bikes.

While you won’t catch me on one, I think these could be pretty popular with some of my bike-happy friends. What do you think?

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I only camp maybe once or twice a year, but I could definitely see the benefits of owning one of these (alright, alright, I’m just trying to justify totally wanting to buy one of these to brag about).

Check this out: It’s a portable shower… in a bag!

The shower zips up into a 45mm x 80mm x 140mm pouch but holds up to 10 L of water! That roughly translates to about a 7 minute shower — not bad at all. It even has a nozzle that can adjust to your ideal spray setting.

Check them out at their website here. I’ll soon be a proud owner of a shower bag — I’m excited, too, is that weird?

While learning to be more eco-friendly, I run into things daily that I don’t quite understand. Some of it, honestly, takes me by surprise. Solar power is a perfect example. I’d love to say that I completely understand solar power, but I really don’t. Sure, I know it’s energy from the sun… I’ve seen solar panels, certainly. But do they… collect the suns rays? How do they turn the sunlight into energy?

Here’s a 7 minute video made by PG&E, a giant utility company in California, that exlains solar power and how it’s converted into electricity.

There’s also a video on PG&E’s website that’s definitely more detailed and informative. And if you’ve got the time — 1h47m, that is — I highly recommend it!

“We will have solar energy as soon as the utility companies solve one technical problem — how to run a sunbeam through a meter.” — anonymous

Cool!

This designer – Jasper Hou – has come up with this super cool design for LED-based lights: You wind the base part of the light which works like clockwork. As it unwinds, energy is released that is used to power the internal LEDs. How cool is that?

The lights are apparently only as bright as candles, but are much more eco-friendly than their candle counterparts as candles are made from processed petroleum products and release carbon dioxide when burnt.

And, unlike with candles, it’s pretty unlikely that you’ll catch your curtains on fire with one of these babies. Not that I know from experience… terrible, smelly, smoke-filled experience…

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Now, I don’t watch a lot of television. I have a television — a relatively nice one, certainly — but I much prefer renting box sets of fantastic shows, documentaries, and movies to watching commercials, bad news broadcast channels, and ‘reality’ television. That being said, this actually caught my eye in the news today:

“Over the course of this season, Jesse James has set himself on fire, outrun the police, ridden across the Arctic Circle on a motorcycle and driven through a minefield, among other challenges. In the process, he’s broken three ribs and an elbow, chipped his pelvis and even had a concussion or two. So what will this guy do for a season finale? How about capture the land speed record for an eco-friendly, but highly volatile, hydrogen-burning vehicle? “Jesse James Is A Dead Man” season finale “Quest for 200 MPH” will premiere on Sunday, August 9 (10:00 – 11:00 PM, ET/PT) only on Spike.”

Apparently this television show — Jesse James Is A Dead Man — is a reality(ish) show (though the internet is not entirely sure that it’s a good tv show) where Jesse James does ridiculous things for show ratings. Hey, I’m not complaining. I’ve watched some terrible reality shows before just to see if the high-maintenance pretty blonde girl will, in fact, eat the squishy animal unmentionables more the million dollars. Who am I to make fun of those who’ll watch a show to see a dude leap over a firey pit of burning barrels on a motorcycle. Cool, man.

So, for the season finale, Jesse James will be attempting to beat the land speed record in an eco-friendly car, huh? Now, my thoughts on this are that hey — if he beats the land record, it might look pretty sweet for the car (go eco-friendly car!) but well, if he blows up… not so good for the car, huh?

How high are the risks with a hydrogen-burning car? This show has got me curious. I’ll do some research and get back to you, sound good? I’m going to bet the risks are pretty low. We all know how television likes to make things life or death. People much prefer death-defying stunts over pretty-run-of-the-mill-risk-defying stunts.

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