Eco-Chick · The modern girl's guide to living green & fabulous.

Into the Hermitage: Low-Impact Gypsy Life on the Road

Few of us can even begin to imagine whittling our possessions down to just a few boxes full of items and living in a room that measures barely eight feet wide. But what if that room was a recycled gypsy home on wheels, with an ever-changing view of the Scottish countryside out of reclaimed leaded glass church windows?

Welcome to the utterly enchanting reality of artist Rima Staines and her partner Tui, a musician. The talented pair live a nomadic existence in their wooden horse box turned charming miniature home, complete with a double bed, rows of bookshelves and a wood stove – all documented on their blog, Into the Hermitage.

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Sara Snow's – Fresh Living: The Essential Room-By-Room Guide to a Greener, Healthier Family and Home

I first became familiar with Sara Snow when I was pregnant and on bed-rest. Between reading baby books and eating I watched her Discovery show Get Fresh with Sara Snow and enjoyed her ease and playful approach to environmentalism. I love how Sara always mixes stories of her childhood into her day-to-day recipes for green living. This adds a personalized touch to her passion for all things green.

Growing up the daughter of Tim Redmond, co-founder of Eden Foods, informed Sara’s life as a green foodie and all around eco-advocate. In her new book, Fresh Living: The Essential Room-By-Room Guide to a Greener, Healthier Family and Home, Sara traverses the modern home, discussing every aspect of our lives and what we can do to connect more with nature and minimize wasteful practices. This unpretentious guide is an easy read that is full of useful information. Sara discusses everything from how to maintain a green lawn naturally (or better yet, how to plant wildflowers and indigenous greens that attract butterflies and deter mosquitoes,) to how to decorate a toxin-free baby nursery.

Sara gives detailed lists of what ingredients to avoid in beauty products, toys, household cleaners, and pretty much anything else one may have in their home or garden. Comprehensive definitions explain the origins of chemicals, how they are used and what is most harmful. These days many products, including purported “organic” or “natural” items, contain dubious ingredients. The explanations of scientific terms really help one to weed through the ambiguous marketing language of greenwashing. There are also recipes for how to make your own cleaners and home products that are totally natural and inexpensive.

A small part of the book I really enjoyed was the simple reminder that house plants are good. They bring the outside in, clean our air, and promote healthy chi. Sara shares a list of the top fifteen plants to have indoors to remove various pollutants from the air. These days people spend hundreds, even thousands on air fresheners and purifiers. Plants!

The description of composting is user friendly. Sometimes composting can seem detailed or labour-intensive, but Sara keeps it simple with a description of what we need and what ingredients can assist in maintaining a healthy compost, even for those living in urban areas.

An important theme reiterated throughout the guide is that there are real dangers in our environment, but we can be empowered by educating ourselves and creating an atmosphere that is fresh, vital and thriving. This book would make a sweet gift but is also an excellent resource to just have handy around the house.

Green Your Easter

Giant. Chocolate. Bunny.

In case you haven’t noticed, the retail world has gone full force “Easter-Spectacular.” With Christmas over, it’s “out with the mince pies, in with the marshmallow hatchlings.” Every supermarket, drug store and big-box retailer is a psychedelic zoo of neon stuffed animals, disposable baskets and giant Styrofoam eggs.

So much of Easter has become commercialized, mass-produced, crapola–a far cry from Easter’s original ode to nature and rebirth. Yet, as most of us recognize the irony, few of us are willing to give up the childhood traditions of bunnies, candy and brightly colored cutesy things.

This Easter, consider a compromise. Trade in the dollar-store trinkets for “greener,” yet equally festive, alternatives. From re-purposed baskets to organic and fair-trade chocolates to natural egg dyes, there’s plenty of colorful flair that won’t harm the planet. Here are some tips:

The Basket:
Instead of wasting money and precious natural resources on Kmart’s taffeta “Lamb Candy Holder Basket”, hit up the local secondhand store or crafts fair for a “real” basket. Feeling particularly ambitious? Then make your own basket. You can learn the “art of basketry” here, or follow this simple pattern for newspaper, magazine cut-outs and wallpaper-swatch baskets. For true eco-ingenuity, or if you’re just really broke, get crafty with colorful tissue boxes, paper bags and your supermarket’s berry containers.

The Grass:
Now that you’ve got such a great basket, don’t ruin it with plastic grass. Just snip some from the top of your lawn. If you prefer foliage that won’t wilt or wither, flip through the pages of a magazine and cut out anything green. Shred it up and you’ve got grass-like filler.

The Eggs:
Most supermarket eggs come from notoriously filthy and inhumane commercial outfits, not old MacDonald’s farm. As the conditions of factory farms come to roost, many conscious consumers are demanding eggs that meet environmentally sound standards. You can demand the same by purchasing USDA organic eggs. For extra eco-brownie points, support your local farm. Find yours at localharvest.org.

The Homemade Eggs:
If you’re super eco-conscious and vegan, then you’re probably skipping the laid eggs altogether. Good for you, but don’t get tempted to the dollar-store’s jumbo plastic selection. Make your own “fake ones” with homemade paper-mache or cornstarch clay.

The Egg Dyes:
Skip the unholy mess of pellets and artificial food dyes. Fruits, vegetables and spices offer a wide range of color possibilities: from bright red to lavender, orange and blue. Just boil eggs (local and organic please) in water and a teaspoon of vinegar. Add ingredients below for desired color. Let simmer for at least 15 minutes. For a darker shade place the brew in the fridge for some overnight saturation.

Pink: beets, cranberries, frozen raspberries.
Red: red onionskins.
Orange: yellow onionskins.
Lavender: grape juice.
Light Yellow: orange or lemon peels, carrot tops, celery seed or ground cumin.
Yellow: Ground turmeric, saffron.
Pale Green: spinach leaves.
Blue: canned blueberries, red cabbage leaves.
Beige/Brown: strong brewed coffee.
Eggs dyed with onionskins, from Instructables.com

The Candy:
Peeps, lollipops, pecan nougat, jellybeans, and even Smucker’s Puckers are just a few Easter favorites. Aside from creating hyperactive chaos on Easter morning, Easter candies are grossly over-packaged. Yes, it is nice to get your egg in perfect condition, but does it really need to come swaddled in corrugated body armor? Look for the candies that come in the least amount of packaging. Cadbury Schweppes has the idea and is now offering eggs wrapped only in foil and without a cardboard box, cutting the company’s Easter packaging by 798,073 pounds.

The Chocolate:
As most of us know, chocolate comes from the cocoa bean, a crop harvested in some of the most economically and environmentally disadvantaged parts of the third world. According to reports from the BBC and New York Times, cocoa producing regions are rife with environmental and humanitarian iniquity.

This Easter, why give your children chocolate made from the sweat and sometimes even blood of less fortunate children? Swap the waxy dollar-store chocolate for organic and fair trade alternatives. Fair trade certification ensures chocolate is made under both environmental and humanitarian standards. According to the Fair Trade Organization (FTO), these standards are quite stringent, ensuring the minimum use and safe handling of agrochemicals, conservation of water, controls on gathering from the wild and deforestation, a ban on GMO (Genetically Modified Organism). For a list of delicious organic and fair trade chocolate options click here.

The Bunnies: Live or Stuffed?
According to the House Rabbit Society, a national, nonprofit bunny welfare organization, each spring, unwanted “former Easter rabbits” fill local rescues, humane societies and worse dumpsters. Unless you’re in it for the long haul and know how to take care of one, please, don’t put a live bunny in your Easter basket! Leave little Peter Cottontail be . . . to hop down the old bunny trail . . . hippity hoppity, Easter’s on its way.

Happy Easter! Please leave your greener Easter suggestions in the comments section.

For more posts like this from Olivia Zaleski check out her weekly column on the Huffington Post

Green Living in Minnesota

Guest-Blogger Tami Molitor sent this report from Minnesota’s Living Green Expo. I think it’s fantastic to hear about all the green stuff happening in places other than the East and West Coasts, and there’s plenty of it. All Americans need to be involved in building a sustainable world, because pretty much all of us have been involved in getting us to this ecologically precarious and dangerous place that we are now. -Ed.

By Guest-Blogger Tami Molitor

My husband and I headed to the Minnesota state fairgrounds in St. Paul the first weekend of May to attend the Living Green Expo. Our first greeting was that of electric cars and a variety of bikes to promote travel without gasoline. Organic Valley family of farms (from Wisconsin)was giving samples of milk and coupons. College “kids” from Macalester were sharing a slideshow from their travels to ice-covered parts of the world to learn more about global warming with world reknowned Minnesotan explorers.

Organic Bob gardening and a variety of organic and natural lawncare, landscapers and gardening cmpanies were exibiting along with green roof promoters, natural skincare companies and small home-based soap makers.

We missed the eco-fashoin show….check the site for more on that. The Waldorf School promoted their Earth-friendly curriculum and trendy South Minneapolis was also well represented with Linden Hills area natural foods coop and home store.

The City of Minneapolis officials participated in presentation of ” An Inconvenient Truth”
via slide show. Clean energy was well represented with local and national energy companies and wind energy groups.

A kid’s area included creative arts, a compassionate kids presentation, recycling games,
visits form the raptor center and healthy toys and snacks. Lots more to see, do and learn for kids and family.

This event is getting bigger every year. We only had time for a three-hour stay, and I feel like we barely sratched the surface. Our goal is to review the handouts and start adding more green living options to our lifestyle. It is great to live in an area that offers this type of event. Be sure to check out the main Living Green expo site for all the details!

Kiwi & Pink & Business Week, Oh My!

The Green is spreading!

First up is Kiwi- maybe those with kids have already heard of this great magazine centered around healthy and green living for parents (it seems to have been out for about 6 months now), but I just came across my first issue. Kiwi is super-informative, with lots of user-friendly articles centering on kids of all ages. The latest issue features articles about green baby shower gifts, responsible vacations for kids and their parents, safe bath products for children and babies, and a long, detailed feature piece on how to put together a greener home. If you know a parent who’s really trying to go green but needs a guide, this magazine is an ideal resource.

Business Week’s cover story for January 29, 2007 is “Beyond the Green Corporation – Imagine a world in which eco-friendly and socially reponsible practices actually help a company’s bottom line. It’s closer than you think.” Along with the main article, which, Business Week style, mentions lots of Fortune 500 companies and shows how their efforts to go green are actually tied to their bottom line (aka making money) in important ways, there are quite a few sidebars. Toyota is featured in one, Wal-Mart in another, and GlaxoSmithKline in a third. There’s also a rather boring-looking graph on “Who’s Doing Well by Doing Good”, which details exactly how leaders in various industries are green, have progressive human capital programs, or earn top marks in other areas of corporate responsibility. (There’s also a small chart below that one, titled “Some Laggards” (nice word choice!), which includes brief critiques of General Motors, Nintendo, and Wal-Mart.)

Take-home quote: “You can’t ignore the impact your company has on the community and environment. In the future, it will be the only way to do business.” – Unilever’s CEO Patrick Cescau

Speaking of business, Pink is a newer magazine that caters to the serious working woman, with the Type-A tagline: A beautiful career, a beatiful life. Inside are articles about inspiring businesswomen, why flying private planes is worth the expense, and tips on mentoring younger women. Aside from the egregious and disturbing article promoting private planes (as if flying on a plane with other people doesn’t already produce a ridiculous amount of CO2), the January issue also has a short piece on “3 Ways to Go Green in 2007″ from Idealbite.com. Their suggestions: Recycle old computers, receive faxes electronically, and bring some plants and air filters into the office. Well, at least they’re trying…..