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!

Alright, this might be the coolest news story I’ve read all week: A report released by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers is claiming that a building covered in algae are awesome for the environment. Now that’s a green building!

“…sealed containers of algae photobioreactors could be integrated into the sides of buildings to produce biofuels and sequester carbon…” (Inhabitat)

And what’s more?

• using algae for biofuels means that it can use waste water and ocean water making spills or leaks relatively harmless
• algae grows much faster than corn or soy
• photobioreactors are expensive, but could very easily be integrated into our existing structures

It’s really good to see the wheels turning — to see engineers really starting to think about these kinds of things. Very encouraging!

How would you feel about your apartment building being covered in algae? I think done well it could look pretty cool, personally. And with all those benefits, I hope to see this in the near future!

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As I’m sure plenty of you reading know by now, SIGG bottles manufactured before August 2008 have recently been found to contain Bisphenol-A (BPA) in their liners. I know it’s bad, but… what exactly is BPA?

Turns out that BPA is a chemical used in the manufacture of polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins and is part of a group of molecules known as ‘endocrine disruptors’.

Endocrine disruptors are defined by the National Institute of Health as

“…naturally occurring compounds or man-made chemicals that may interfere with the production or activity of hormones of the endocrine system leading to adverse health effects. Many of these chemicals have been linked with developmental, reproductive, neural, immune, and other problems in wildlife and laboratory animals. Some scientists think these chemicals also are adversely affecting human health in similar ways resulting in declined fertility and increased incidences or progression of some diseases including endometriosis and cancers.”

Eeep! Way to let us all down, SIGG! And I was so proud of you recently, too. Look into your reusable bottles before you buy them, folks!

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Alright, alright — you got me. It’s not Cinco de Mayo, but can’t we pretend?

The weather’s getting colder and soon there’ll be… *brace yourself* …snow on the ground.

With the long weekend finally here, why don’t you get in one last hurrah with this tasty organic Margarita recipe?

Ingredients:

• 3oz of 4 Copas 100% Agave Organic Tequila
• 2oz of freshly squeezed organic lime juice
• 1oz of simple agave syrup
• Topped with some organic sugar and kosher salt for the rim

Method:

1. Prechill your glasses.
2. To make the simple syrup add:1 part agave nectar,1 part organic sugar &1 part water to a sauce pan and cook & stir over low heat until the sugar is disolved.
3. Next fill your coctail shaker with the tequila, lime juice, syrup and ice and shake unitl until mixed and cool.
4. Mix up 2 parts salt and 1 part sugar and put it in a dish.
5. Now dip the rim of your chilled glass in the sugar/salt mix, it should stick. **Make sure you do this before you fill your glass with Margarita. Don’t ask
6. Now strain the Margarita into your glass and enjoy!

The green socioverse has recently coined a new term — ‘precycling’ — but what does it really mean? Pre-recycling, right? Like… using a product? Before… cycling? The sci-fi mind in me goes into questions involving recycling, time and space, and DeLoreans.

But I’m crazy.

The real meaning behind precycling is much more forward thinking — towards waste reduction and making packaging that’s easier to recycle when the time comes. Precycling!

How can we precycle? Purchase products in bulk to reduce packaging, re-filling water bottles, re-using coffee containers to store things, etc.), canvas shopping bags, online flyers and catalogues instead of paper ones — say no to junk mail!

And now you we know!

Up in Northern Ontario here, it’s quite cold today so I’m going to make one of my most grandparent-impressing soups. I don’t know about your grandparents, but mine are all about root vegetables.

This warming and tangy soup has a really pretty muted-orange glow, and has just a touch of spice. I’m a big fan of lively soup! Be sure to try this recipe with organic carrots, potatoes, onions and celery, as their flavor is so much better than those grown on industrial farms.

Organic root vegetables like these are considered seasonal no matter where you live, and are found easily in health food stores and plenty of grocery stores, too. Choosing organic oranges is especially important when you make an orange zest, so as not to ingest the surface pesticides found on industrially-grown orange skin. Nothing good about pesticide soup, folks!

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I stumbled on to pictures of cob houses on TreeHugger this morning and now I can’t stop reading up on them!

I’ve decided now that someday I will have one of these. Imagine that — from not-so-green to wanting to live in a cob house in no time at all. Now that’s progress.

Cob houses, for those who don’t know, have nothing to do with corn. Sure, you might have known that, but when I first started reading about them I figured there had to be some corn cobs in there somewhere. Where else have you heard the word cob? Cob is actually a building material made from clay, sand, straw, water, and earth — very similar to adobe. It’s fireproof, resistant to seismic activity and – best of all – quite inexpensive. This one here, for example (see photo) was build for under $3000!

The houses I’ve found online are absolutely beautiful! (Check out my favourites here, here, and here.)

I’m definitely becoming a fan of sustainable, natural development. Not just because it looks beautiful, but because I really admire the hard work, time, and enthusiasm one needs to use the environment around them to build something so worthwhile!

Apparently former Prime Minister Joe Clark is a self-proclaimed “treehugger”!

He’s heavily involved, these days, in a controversial project in Ghana that’s working to reclaim dead trees from Lake Volta including ebony, teak, mahogany and other beautiful, tropical hardwood where they’ve been preserved by the lack of oxygen in the water. The trees are estimated at being worth $1500 and $2500 each!

So where does the controversy come in? According to the Globe & Mail, the project might be negatively affecting fishing in that area.

Fishermen in the area are worried that the fish will go away if the trees are cut down and taken away. Some fishermen use the trees in their water to hold their traps. But some fishermen say the trees damage their boats.

So, who benefits? That’s the real question. What do you think?

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I love looking at design blogs. Not house design or fashion, but more innovative, conceptual design — architecture, technology, gadgets, that sort of thing.

Today I happened across “The Source Project” by Oliver Craig.

Oliver has come up with a really innovative concept that aims at getting the public to give up commercial bottled water in favour of tap water. How does he plan on doing that? (Hey, even I don’t like tap water.) By offering people tap water… with cool, futuristic and esthetically pleasing style.

The way Oliver Craig envisions doing this is with reusable (and neato futurisicly designed) water bottles that you could purchase and then top up for free at water dispensers around the city. And what’s better? Each time you fill up you earn credits/points that are redeemable at participating stores. Cool concept, right? It looks so sci-fi to me, like something right out of Tank Girl (one of my all-time favourite movies, of course).

Kudos, Oliver!

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