Challenge 10: The hour is upon us

You’ve changed your light bulbs, reduced the meat in your diet, installed a low-flow showerhead, taken toxic cleaners to the hazardous waste depot and tried all the other challenges Catherine and I have set out since mid-January.
Now what?
This is the 10th and final challenge for our Green Life blog. We trust, though, that it’s just the start as you do what you can to reduce your environmental footprint.
This week, we’re proposing three more steps to turn an end into a beginning.
First, since this is Earth Hour day, the initial challenge is to turn out your lights, and anything else electric that you can safely do without, between 8 and 9 this evening.
You’ll be part of a worldwide movement that has gained remarkable momentum, particularly in Canada and Australia — where the event was launched last year.
Earth Hour is all about education and changing behaviour but, what the heck, contests are fun and why shouldn’t Toronto and the rest of the GTA achieve a bigger drop in electricity use than anywhere else.
Hundreds of governments and businesses say they’ll participate. But the consumption meters won’t fall very far, and the photos won’t be truly memorable, unless plenty of homeowners, condo dwellers and apartment residents flick some switches, too.
Second, since Earth Hour isn’t just about 60 minutes of near darkness, the next part of the challenge is to keep on keeping on with the previous green moves, and the 71 daily tips we’ve posted on thestar.com.
Some cynics scoff at this evening’s event or argue it’s the wrong approach. It’s certainly not the only way to encourage greener lives, and it can’t be enough on its own to prevent climate change and other environmental problems from reaching calamitous proportions. Government measures — things like tough regulations and substantial carbon taxes — are essential, as are new technologies and ways of doing business.
But experience shows that people who try to make improvements get angry with politicians who don’t, and it’s amazing how often politicians develop backbones when they believe their jobs are at risk.
The enthusiastic response to Earth Hour does suggest that many of us are concerned about environment issues and that the event is a great way to widen awareness. It will be a success, though, only if it helps to lead to widespread and permanent steps toward conservation.
We’ve tried to provide a good starting point, and there are vast amounts of information available to keep you going. Two good starting points are WWF-Canada’s Good Life web site and Weconserve, a project of the Conservation Council of Ontario.
Mostly it’s a matter of being conscious of the fact that electricity, no matter how cheap or under priced, is never free. From wind turbines to smoke-spewing coal-fired generating stations, every source has impacts.
The same goes for other resources: The more we use, the more damage we cause. There is no need to starve, freeze, swelter or grope in the dark: We simply need to live wiser and smarter.
Which brings us to the final part of our final challenge: Learn about the environment and make yourself heard. Whether it’s joining or supporting a group; talking to friends and neighbours; helping with a school project; contacting politicians or businesses — involve yourself.
We won't endorse any particular group, or suggest what message you should send to whom. As journalists, we’ve already ventured far enough into advocacy.
The bottom line: Simply become alive to issues that will determine the fate of our planet. To be blunt: Nothing that we do as individuals, on our own, will be enough to avert the climate-change crisis just as it would make virtually no difference to the global outcome if Canada were to immediately stop using fossil fuels. On the other hand, nothing at the essential bigger scale will happen unless people who can do something actually act and create pressure, and examples, for others to follow.
There’s still plenty of resistance to change and differences of opinion have been the order of the day in the responses to our blog.
When we suggested finding substitutes for plastic, and increasing recycling, we got an earful from Dave who objected to the city’s instruction to rinse items before tossing them in the bin. “It’s garbage. Garbage. Garbage,” he wrote. “Life is short enough. Now I have to spend time cleaning my garbage. It’s garbage. Garbage.”
Some of you expressed frustration at attempts to go greener. It can be tough to find a parking spot at GO train stations.
“Oh, ouch,” wrote Nancy, after the “Bye flight” challenge to restrict air travel and its hefty carbon emissions. “I’m finally at the age when I can afford global travel every year or so and now don’t know if my conscience will let me. My timing sucks!”
The call to go meatless for a day also produced objections. “Come on! This is another example of going way too far, at the risk of turning people off,” wrote Anne-Marie Demers. “Are you also going to suggest not having children at all, like I saw on another web site?”
Quite a few of you, in fact, have concluded that the only hope lies in population control. We didn’t pursue that debate since, while it’s true that fewer people would mean less stress on Earth’s environment, it’s an idea that’s virtually impossible to turn into a politically and socially acceptable policy. People will have to decide as individuals how many kids to have, and why.
Mostly, you’ve demonstrated understanding and thoughtfulness, and a willingness to try different things. Some of you embrace new technologies: Others look back to the future, to power-free gizmos like the “sidewalk strider” as an alternative to the treadmill.
Either way, it seems a lot of people are ready for change. We heard from many like Annie, who wrote: “Wow, this is great information ..... Great stuff! Thank you so much.”

Comment from Texas

We have changed out ALL our light bulbs, only use one light at a time in room we are in, have put pvc pipes on washer to collect water from washer for re using, have rain barrels all around house to collect rain water for re use ( 8 barrels now around house), have 2 gallon buckets in both bathrooms and kitchen to collect water from fauchets and shower while waiting for water to warm up, was amazing when we discovered how much water was being wasted waiting for it to warm up to use, have changed out most all our landscaping to plants that dont even require much water, use our microwave for most all cooking now, do have fireplace big enough to cook in and do sometimes, is 56 inches wide, have purchased our own cloth shopping bags and stopped getting plastic ones, have changed out commodes with all new tank equipment to cut down water usuage, installed low water usuage shower, do turn off our computers at night ( 2 of them) use ceiling fans and open windows for most of year,
installed new ac duct work, new insulation, and even in hottest parts of summer, rarely have to turn on ac, and it does get hot in Texas, but, we stay cool here in hill country, our electric bill had dropped to just under $100.00 a MONTH, even in worst heat times here. ! our water bill is usually around $35.00 a month now, but, that also includes a light the electric company puts in , and garbage too..as for garbage, now, how to be able to stop using those plastic bags in garbage cans ? and how to find products, tooth paste, paper towels, toilet paper other household stuff wrapped in plastic ? even meats we buy, is wrapped in plastic..why ? so many products we use around house, all in plastic covers, seems like must be better way..soooo, what else can we do to keep going green, have also stopped driving , I drive very little, only to Dr's, rarely, on once a week shopping, husband commutes with others to work, we ARE looking for any other ways we can change..any info would
be appreciated..
  Thanks so much for your site, have forwarded it to all our family and friends, who will all be taking part in the lights out on March 29th..
  Sincerely,
  Claudine Bradshaw
  Bandera Texas

Green Baby

So, you won't be hearing for me for a while. Today is my last day at The Star for a year. I'm baby-bound, and we're talking big, big baby at this point. I have officially run out of clothes that fit me. I'm well past the cute-pregnant stage and deep into the If-You-Don't-Give-Me-A-Seat-on-the-Subway-This-Morning-I'm-Going-to-Blubber stage. D-day is 8 days and counting, setting me neatly in a hospital room around 8 p.m. on March 29. I don't relish the idea of giving birth in the dark, but hey, I'm committed. I may just give birth to the city's first Earth Hour Baby.

For the next year, you can think of me elbow-deep in soiled cloth diapers, perfecting the "shush" and dreaming about drinking VQA wine (what they don't tell you when you first get pregnant, is that you are cut off from booze not just for the nine months while the baby is inside, but for months afterwards, while you are breastfeeding). If you see a woman with circles under her eyes standing transfixed before a table at your local farmers market, come introduce yourself.
Until then, keep binding those eco-feet.

All the best,
Catherine

Challenge 10: Greening your Workplace

So, you’ve taken all your toxic cleaning products to the depot, switched all your lights to compact fluorescents and started to hang up your laundry instead of using the power-hungry dryer at home. But then, when you get to work, the bathroom sparkles with chemicals, the lights and computers have been left running all night and the only cups available in the cafeteria are made of Styrofoam.
No wonder many of us feel like a split personality between David Suzuki and a private Airbus-flying Saudi prince, the green version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
So, it’s time to turn our green eyes to the office.

Challenge: Make one green change at your workplace.

The Motivation: Most of us spend more time at work than we do at home. Shouldn’t our offices then reflect our environmental ideals? If you recycle at home, why wouldn’t you expect to do it at work, where you spend twice the waking hours?
Plus, when it comes to combating climate change, that’s where we can make more headway. In Toronto, more carbon emissions spew from industrial and commercial buildings than they do from residences, according to a recent report by the Toronto Atmospheric Fund.
Think about it this way: if you change all the light bulbs in your home from incandescents to compact fluorescents, you might save about 800 kilowatt hours — just under a month’s worth of your home’s electricity. But, if you get just one floor of a downtown office building to turn off its lights at night, that could mean 24,000 fewer kilowatt-hours of electricity — enough to power 20 homes for the entire year!
Plus, you might just then convince all the people who work there to start lighting down at home….

Process: Choose one thing you can realistically change. Make is something you are passionate about. Here, at The Star, a colleague got infuriated at all the paper being unnecessarily printed. So, he printed up the instructions on how to set the computer to double-print documents, and posted it above a popular printer. Now, more than a dozen reporters have changed their printing ways….
Some examples of campaigns you could launch (these are all things we are looking to implement at The Star, but Peter will write about that later):

1. Reduce your workplace’s office paper use – by setting all your photocopiers and printers to print double-sided by default. If they are older models without that option, set up a system where used paper is stocked back in the machines for a second use. If you workplace uses virgin tree pulp paper, try to convert them to stock paper with at least 30 percent recycled content – saving not only trees, but energy and water. If you are worried about quality, note the U.S. government has printed exclusively on the stuff for almost 10 years. The Seattle city government uses only 100 per cent recycled paper and reduced their paper use by 21 per cent to pay for the difference.  To see how many trees your workplace could save, check out The Paper Calculator.
2. Computer down. When you leave at night, turn off your computer. And get your colleagues to do the same. Make it a policy. Just by doing that, you’ll cut every computer’s electricity use by a quarter.
3. Light down. Do you work in one of those buildings where the lights glow 24 hours a day? If so, can you find out who controls the off switch and convince him/her to flip it at night? If not, can you convince him to change the lighting for a more energy-efficient kind? If you are lucky, and work in a place with an old-fashioned on-off switch, you could post a sticker above it reminding the last person out to flip it down.
4. De-Styrofoam your workplace. More than 8 billion disposable cups are tossed in Canada every year. Make your office an exception. One easy solution is to head to Value Village and buy all your colleagues second-hand porcelain cups for 25 cents each. Or, you can do what Toronto Community Housing did, and have special corporate coffee mugs – with lids – made for all the employees.
5. De-Auto the office. Three-quarters of Canadians drive alone to work. Set up a carpooling database for your colleagues, so they know who near them is driving to work. Or, could you reserve better parking for people who arrive with more than themselves in the car?

Most of these are easy things a company could do to make a difference. But, bureaucracy moves slowly. So be patient. Form a workplace green team to help you work on some basic goals. If get really serious, can bring in a corporate sustainability consultant to draft up plan for you.

Cost: Your time.

Savings: For the company, less electricity means less money – sometimes a lot less. It’s estimated the average bank tower could save $2 million a year by turning off the lights at night. The company will also gain improved employee morale, loyalty and a stronger public image, according to a recent report by the Society of Human Resource Managers.
For you, you’ll save your green conscience.

-- Catherine Porter

Challenge 9: Detox your Home

This week we discovered that most of us still pitch our used batteries in the trash. The problem? While household batteries make up less than 1 per cent of landfill, they’re responsible for up to 70 per cent of the heavy metals found there — nasty things like cadmium, lead and mercury, a neurotoxin that has made eating more than one serving of tuna a week tantamount to drinking nail polish.

Those are just one of the myriad of toxic substances we stock in our homes. There’s paint, paint thinners, pesticides, even our basic detergents — the things that are supposed to clean our homes!

Many of those bad things end up in the air, water or land, poisoning the wildlife and water supply.

Why would we keep them around — especially when there are non-toxic replacements that are easy to find? Sure, the science still isn't clear as the vast majority of the industrial chemicals on the Canadian market haven't been tested. But why take the chance? My 2-year old might not be hit jay walking across Bloor Street, but...

The Challenge: Get rid of all toxic cleaners in your home.

The Motivation: Indoor air pollution is now worse than the toxic brew you breathe outside. In part, that’s to blame for our skyrocketing rates of asthma and cancer.
There are thousands of industrial chemicals manufactured and sold in Canada, and only a handful have been tested for their health and environmental impacts. Many are in our cleaning products. Tilex Total Bathroom Multipurpose Cleaner, for one, contains 2-Butoxyethanol — a reproductive toxin the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry says causes birth defects in animals.
That, like other cleaning products, is made to be dissolved in water and sent down the drain. Hormone-disrupting chemicals from antibacterial soaps and cleaning agents were recently found in San Francisco Bay during a year-long study by the Environmental Working Group, an American non-profit agency. One of the chemicals, triclosan, has been shown to feminize fish. Also, when exposed to sunlight, it converts into a type of dioxin — deadliest pollutant ever made.

Process: Check under your sink and in your laundry room. You’ll find a lot of bottles with a lot of corroded hand symbols, skull and crossbones, and instructions to phone the Poison Control Centre if the product was swallowed. All of those are definitely toxic. Take them all to the nearest hazardous waste depot.

Then, you enter a trickier terrain. Health Canada doesn’t require companies to list ingredients on cleaning products. The assumption is they are used in such low doses, they're not harmful. My approach: Better safe than sorry. If they do have any ingredients listed, the basic rule of thumb is: avoid anything with an ingredient ending in “ene” or “ol”, or with “phenol,” “chlor” or “glycol” in its name.  Check out the list of cleaning products typical to most homes the Labour Environmental Alliance Society researched, checking for only eight toxic ingredients. Now imagine: there are more than 23,000 industrial chemicals in Canada, the vast majority of which have never been tested.

Next, go to health food store and stock up on eco-friendly, non-toxic replacements. Any product you have now will have a competitively-priced green equivalent — even toilet bowl cleanser. Even cheaper would be to make your own, by buying the basic all-natural cleaning ingredients: baking soda; baking power; borax; vinegar; and some essential oils. That’s all humans used for centuries before inventing synthetic chemicals, after all. 

Cost: Around $60 for new clean products. But would have had to buy replacements at some point anyway. Included in that is cost of green clean guide, like Annie Berthold-Bond’s Clean and Green:The Complete Guide to Nontoxic and Environmentally Safe Housekeeping or the newly-released Green Up Your Cleanup, by Jill Potvin Schoff.

Savings: None — except your family’s health.

-- Catherine Porter

Going green is easy

We've been offering all sorts of green tips and challenges in the weeks leading to Earth Hour.

Now you can take action thanks to a series of five Conservation Fairs to be held in various parts of Toronto during the next couple of weeks. Organized by the Conservation Council of Ontario and its Weconserve campaign, the two-hour sessions will offer 60 minutes of speed presentations -- seven, each five minutes long -- on subjects of your choice, followed by a chance to browse and chat with representatives of green groups and businesses. Topics include saving energy, naturalizing your garden, eating green and local and preventing pollution. The main message: "Going green was never easier."

Go to the Weconserve website for information.

Challenge 8 -- Bye flight

So, you and the kids are off to Disney World, Whistler or some other far-off pleasure place for March break. Or waiting at Pearson airport for the runways to be cleared.
Either way, you’ve got some hours to ponder our latest challenge.
Which is, simply, don’t do this again. Slipping the surly bonds of Earth is hard on the environment — not to mention your nerves when you spend two days of your week-long vacation embroiled in getting there and back.
The Challenge: Resolve that next year you’ll find your fun close to home instead of thousands of kilometres away.
And for this year, since it’s too late to change your plans, consider purchasing offsets to compensate for the greenhouse gas emissions your trip will add to the atmosphere.
Motivation: Air travel is a small but potent and fast-growing cause of climate change. Those turbines spew immense amounts of greenhouse gases and the impact is multiplied 2.7 times because the emissions are at high altitude.

Process: The longer-term part of the challenge is straightforward. You simply decide: No more March break flying. Instead, investigate good things to do near home.
For the short term, offsets pay for each tonne of greenhouse gas emissions your trip produces. Your cash goes to projects that cut emissions elsewhere. Offsets are controversial: They’ve been compared to the medieval indulgences that let sinners buy absolution. If you leap that philosophical hurdle, you can choose which of several offsetters to buy from.

Here's how my fellow blogger Catherine Porter described the options in a recent story on offsets:

Each company has its own method, using different data on fuel consumption, the number of seats, and the effect of the altitude. Most projects aim to avoid emissions elsewhere: Energy-efficient light bulbs in Kazakh schools will reduce fumes belched out by local coal-powered plants.
Some pay to do the same in North America, through wind farms or, in one case, a geothermal well supplying energy to a Vancouver AIDS hospice. Others aim to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by planting trees.
How do you separate good offsets from bad?
First, ask: “Would this project have happened anyway?” If your money goes toward a wind farm the government wants built, you are simply saving taxpayers money.
Are the projects verified by a third party? You don’t want to unwittingly line the pockets of some warlord in Africa. There is a gold standard for offsetting projects, developed by the World Wildlife Fund. It ensures a project does what it advertises, and doesn’t cause damage by, say, kicking people off land to plant trees.
Speaking of trees, a report by Boston’s Tufts University.says to avoid projects that plant them. “You have to ensure they’re around in perpetuity, which is pretty hard to do,” says Paul Lingl of the David Suzuki Foundation.
But there is an argument in favour of planting trees. How sure can you be that the Kazakh villagers don’t unscrew those fluorescent bulbs after the well-meaning Westerners have left? “The only known method we have today for extracting carbon from the atmosphere is planting trees,” says Ron Dembo, CEO of Toronto-based Zerofootprint. The company funds reforestation projects in British Columbia, but factors in a 25 per cent chance they’ll die. “The reality is we need to take carbon out and not just avoid (emitting) it," Dembo says.

There are many offsetters to check out, and while you’re doing the research, dig in to the types of projects they support. It’s a good education in how to reduce emissions. Check out zerofootprint, Carbon Neutral, Planetair and Carbon Zero Canada. This partial list isn't meant as a starting point, not an endorsement. Most of the offsetters offer carbon calculators.

Cost: Expect to pay around $10 per tonne of emissions. The 3,376-kilometre round trip between Toronto and Orlando emits 400 kilograms of greenhouse gases per passenger.

Savings: There’s no direct financial saving from offsets. But staying home is usually cheaper than being a jet-setter.

Those of you planning to spend March break here can designate one Green Day during the week when you can try out one or more of our previous challenges or the Star's green tip of the day, or come up with something else to reduce your footprint. Let us know what you decide and how it goes.

-- Peter Gorrie