It was more of a sour grapes than an emerald green.

On Saturday we decided to have a family day and go to the Green Living Show. We were hoping to see something that we would be able to incorporate into the house. I was really hoping that there would be something on worm composting as I was hoping to start one this summer (assuming that the Strata lets me, I do know that there are rats, raccoons, coyotes and other wildlife living around us.) I was also hoping that there might be some booths devoted to food, cleaning and well things to do with living. What we got was rather disappointing. There was really not much of anything. We wandered around and looked at stuff, ate overpriced food and left with a sense of blah.

Talking about it afterwards we both realised that we were frustrated by the lack of anything new and the dismal showing of local businesses. WalMart, Chevrolet and Home Depot were there (I know the first people I think of when I am thinking of green businesses, though to be fair WalMart actually does have some very green practices as they actually result in cost savings.) but there was no representation from the local farmer’s markets, organic food chains (including SPUDS) or really any new ideas for living green. Having been researching environmentally friendly paints and other green building supplies it amazed me that there was nothing on green renovations.

The question is was this lack of representation and innovative ideas because of the marketers of the show or was it the lack of interest on the part of potential vendors? Sometimes I wish I had gone into marketing rather than teaching as it kills me to see good ideas and concepts under-utilised and is the kind of projects that I love to do. Thinking about it makes me get angry about New Westminster Quay all over again. There is a place that could do with an overhaul and is such a sad place and yet there is so much potential if the off-shore owners, community and city council actually decided to do something about it. Of course we are talking about the New West city council that was worried about having the farmer’s market at City Hall because of the garbage but have absolutely no problems in handing land to condo developers with no real benefit to the denizens of the city. (How about a new park, funding for the Mundy Park Pool …).

I have also been thinking about the concerns about the cost of food that has been in the news lately. I don’t know why anyone is particularly surprised about the increase in cost. Considering the cost of oil has gone up (which is used to make fertilisers, pesticides and run the machinery and transport the goods) and that more crops are being used as bio fuel. Why we thought using bio fuel would be better is beyond me. The crops used for bio fuel are still being grown with a dependency on oil which means that we are still reliant on the very thing that the bio fuel is supposed to be replacing. What I am hoping is that the increase cost in oil and the resulting increase in costs for farmers (and the corporations) will actually mean that more farmers may start looking at changing their farming practices. Especially if the difference in price between organically or biodynamically grown food and ‘regularily’ grown food is diminished.

I also find it mildly amusing that our incredibly forward-thinking government is promoting eating local foods and at the same time remove land from the agriculture land reserve and closed down farm run slaughter houses.

An Ecosystem in the Corner of the Room

For the past 6 months we have been growing a little ecosystem in the corner of our living room.  Our fish had all died and things had become a little busy what with a new baby in the house.  Occasionally either Ryan and I would look over at the fish tank and wonder aloud when something would be done with it.  Around October, Ryan made the attempt to deal with the tank by turning off the filter and heater.  The tank continued to sit growing its algae garden, an underwater grave for the fish that had disappeared into its bowels.

Or so we thought.

Tonight while I was persuading Imogen that sleep is a good thing, Ryan began to empty out the tank in preparation for its journey to our new house.  By the time I sat on the couch the tank was empty.  I heard some rustling and assumed that the cat had found some paper.  It happened again and this time I could see Sabine.  I looked at Ryan and then in tandem we both looked at the fish tank.  On cue, the rustling sound emanated out of the tank.  While Ryan peered into its depths I attempted to grab our one and only lamp to bring it closer.  Ryan let out a “No shit!”  and there it was…  the shark that we had thought had died in July.  Lying on its side with its gills flapping open and close, the shark was taking its last breath.   As Ryan ran to get water, I stared at the shark wondering how you give mouth to mouth to a shark and if fish get brain damage when they have a lack of oxygen to the brain.  Were there going to be lasting effects to this chain of events?  Do vets deal with fish with brain damage?  (The strange thoughts had more to do with my fragile state of being due to the upcoming move rather than any real love of the fish.)

It has been an hour and the fish has been fed real fish food for the first time in the last 6 months.  We will see whether or not the fish survives.  Of course, the next questions is what to do with the fish.  It has obviously become accustomed to its environment being unheated, unbalanced and filled with algae.  The algae was probably what kept the fish alive.

The saddest thing is now all I can think is – shit, now we are going to have to move the tank with water in it AND find a place for it in the new house that is not the storage closet.

Branding the Baby

We decided before Miss Pumpkin was born that we were going to use cloth diapers. We have in suite laundry, are concerned about the environment and its what good parents are supposed to do. However, we also looked at the cloth diapers and knew that they were going to be bigger than her when we brought her home so we picked up some Huggies for newborns. We were appalled to realise that they were decorated with lovely pictures of Winnie the Pooh a la Disney, Pampers were no better with the Sesame baby Elmo and other ‘baby’ Sesame Street characters.

Since then, Miss Pumpkin has voiced her opinion over cloth diapers and it isn’t positive. When we are at home and I am feeling up to it, we will use them during the day. What it has meant is that I have to forage for disposable diapers that do not have advertising directed at my daughter’s subconscious and that don’t make me shudder when I touch them because they feel too much like foam. We buy Simply Kids and Seventh Generation chlorine free diapers. The Simply Kids are awesome and cheaper than Huggies or Pampers but are decorated with some sort of kid friendly characters. The Seventh Generation are equally fantastic and have no decoration on them, they are definitely more expensive. Which ones we buy is determined by where I am shopping when I need to pick up diapers.

Why the long post about diapers? I think it is a perfect example of how branding our children occurs without us really noticing. Winnie the Pooh is cute, adorable and how could Tigger be a bad thing for a baby. It isn’t – except that I am putting this on my child every day, several times a day for most likely 2-3 years. By the time, the toilet training is done and the diapers are gone my child has been fully indoctrinated into Disney’s version of Winnie the Pooh and/or Sesame Street characters. (When we were kids did Sesame Street have all of the dolls, clothing and stuff that they do now? I can’t remember)

Ryan and I had already decided that we wanted to limit the toys that Miss Pumpkin would own. It is amazing how quickly the toys can accumulate and most kids I know don’t really play with all of them. I have always been an aware viewer when it comes to advertising and media in general, in the past 4 months I have become hyper aware. I almost went into an apoleptic fit when I saw the ad for the Dora Explorer cash register which includes a charge card and other great add ons. Bratz dolls are another group of commercials that make me want to throw away the tv and move to the middle of nowhere. What bothers me most about these ads and all of the marketing that is directed to kids is that it creates whiny, mini consumers whose only way of getting what they want is to nag at their parents. Yes, it is the parents responsibility to say “no” but in a culture that is so commodified and where love is more often represented through things as opposed to time, I think this is easier to say than do.

What I find most difficult now is to not simply react to the things that I see, read and hear. It has become harder to step back and analyse my reactions. To ask myself the questions: “what is it that I find offensive?”, “what makes this appealing to children?” and so on.  It doesn’t help that I have read too many articles and books on the marketing to and commodification of children and teens in my past.  More often than not, what I am reacting to is the feeling that we are being controlled by corporations and conglomerates.  Children are being trained to be mindless cogs in the economic wheel of cheap labour and cheap products that make the rich richer and the rest of us and the environment poorer and sicker.

More and more we are becoming removed from what it actually means to make or grow something.  Our sense of what something is worth has been twisted so that items that should be discussed in terms of its quality have been reduced to measurements of quantity.   We process our food so extensively that we have to add back nutrients that are found naturally in it.  We talk about good food being expensive and yet we think nothing of buying Kraft Dinner because it can feed us cheaply and yet the $1 price tag doesn’t truly factor in the cost to the environment not to mention that the processed food is heavily subsidized by governments.  Furthermore, the actual nutritional value of kraft dinner is nonexistent, in that sense it is vastly overpriced.   When asked, I want my children to know what foods are in season, where they come from and more importantly how to prepare them.  We are luckier than most as there is the family farm that they will be able to visit and work on.  I want them to understand that everybody deserves to be paid for their labour, that the environment isn’t something to be pillaged.

In the end it will be about balance and our willingness to say  “no” when so many other people are going to be saying “yes.”  I just hope that Miss Pumpkin and any other squashes we find in the vegetable patch understand that there was a reason behind their parents’ madness.

Sometimes it’s just so hard

I have been drinking fair trade coffee for a number of years now.  I had decided that it was one very small thing that I could do to make the world a better place.  It also assuaged the middle class guilt that I was feeling about slurping my coffee on my way to work to teach kids knowing that the people who were providing my morning fix likely didn’t have the opportunity to send their own children to school.  It is expensive, sure, but we can afford it and I have never been a big fan of the big tins of coffee that you can buy in the grocery store, so it really isn’t much more expensive than what I was buying previously.  (It really is shameful how snobby I can be.)

Since then I have also tried to buy other fair trade products; chocolate, sugar and other baking goods.  My latest attempt at being socially conscious in my eating habits is the desire to purchase fair trade tea.  This is when more of the snobbery comes out.  I don’t like tea bags.  I’ll do it if I have to but it is not my preferred method of tea drinking.  I was raised by parents who have their own traditions and rituals around the art of brewing of tea that may not be on the same level as the Japanese Tea Ceremony but it is close.  Also, we have begun to drink tea in the evening at home.  A tea bag is something you use when you are running off somewhere, not something that you put into the teapot so that you can enjoy a leisurely cup and let the day wind down.  So hence the problem.

It is impossible to find loose black (blended or unblended) fair trade tea!  I have spent a number of hours on the internet and various specialty food stores looking for loose fair trade tea.  I don’t know why I thought I would find loose fair trade tea at the grocery store as it is rare to find any loose tea on the shelves.  My mother, who also drinks fair trade coffee that she mixes coffee from a local roaster because she believes that you also have to support the local small businesses, buys her tea at Murchies and a store on Main street.  Now Murchies says that they only purchase their coffees and teas from growers that pay good wages and provide medical and educational facilities but I prefer to have a bit more proof than that, especially since there is a body that certifies fair trade products.

So on the internet I go, where I search and find a couple of places but usually there is a lot of green tea or rooibus and not the strong black teas that I like.  I also have a penchant for Earl Grey, as there is something so lovely and calming about sipping on bergamot. Furthermore, everything is sold in ounces so I am constantly getting up to compare quantities with whatever I can find in my cupboard that is measured in ounces.  The common quantity that the tea is sold is 2  or 4 ounces.  That would hardly keep us in tea for a month.  It is also considerably more expensive than fair trade coffee but I have already decided to put my money where my mouth is.  Of course, if I also include the amount of time that I have put into locating the tea, the price is jacked up even more.  Thank goodness for long naps in the afternoon.

I also am frustrated by the lack of Canadian companies selling loose fair trade tea.  It kills me that I am going to have to buy tea from a company in the States.  I approached the Salt Spring Coffee Co. but they only have tea bags.  So, I think that I have narrowed down my choices between two companies.  They are Brown’s Coffee located in Seattle and Choice Organics also located in Seattle.  I have decided to bring Seattle into my own sphere of local geography and so don’t feel as badly as I would if I was purchasing from companies in New York.  I am leaning towards Choice simply because they also purchase renewable energy certificates to offset 100% of the energy used at their plant.  Maybe I’ll buy from both and then do a comparison.

I’ll keep you posted.