Wade in the water….

I have to be blunt here. Kingston water is not as good as Toronto water. You can very clearly smell the chlorine, and there is another smell as well. The first week we were here I cleaned the toilet 4 or 5 times a day thinking that was the problem, but it’s just the water. Aurora and I got used to drinking it (not from the toilet, of course), but Kyle didn’t and he was starting to have headaches and such from not drinking water. We won’t buy bottled water, so I caved in and agreed to buy a Britta. We didn’t have one before because I worried about the disposable filters and the packaging they come in. Unfortunately, even after going through the Britta, the water tastes bad. I’m not quite sure what to do now.
The other water issue is simply that there is too much in our apartment. We noticed it was taking laundry forever to dry when we hung it, and we started putting fans on it. Then we discovered….THE MOLD.We gave it the Hydrogen peroxide and borax treatment, but it keeps coming back. ICK!!!! So, for the first time in years we are using the dryer again. I’m not happy about it at all, but we have no outside place to hang laundry and this apartment is simply too damp to hang things in here. Sigh
The landlord did fix the drip in our bathtub, and to do so he had to change the whole faucet so we got a more efficient shower head. It’s amazing! We still have nice pressure but we use about 25% of the water we used to . I know this because I stand in a large container while having my shower so the water is collected to later flush the toilet with. Even though I am a very fast shower-er (5 minutes tops), I usued to fill the container. Now it is only about 1/4 filled, if that. Pretty cool!
I am really looking forward to the day that we can have our own home with a backyard and a composter and clothes line. Sigh. While I am dreaming, we will also have a grey water recycling system. I think Kyle is even going to learn how to do that in school. Wooo hooo!

Someone’s in the kitchen I know o o o

I have started making my own bread! A few weeks ago, Aurora and I went over to a fiend’s and he let her poke the dough of the bread he was making, to deflate it. She loved it. I had always wanted to make bread but it just seemed like too much work. It’s not really and if you have kids, it’s something they can do too. My first loaf was Spelt bread and it was probably the best I’ve ever had. It was a bit crumbly after the 2nd or 3rd day but that’s par for the course with Spelt flour, I think.
Next I made whole wheat bread, but I couldn’t find any recipes without milk and we usually don’t have milk in the fridge…so I used this fancy recipe and it turned out great.
Actually I didn’t really follow either recipe to the mark. I ran out of honey and used more molasses plus I didn’t put any instant coffee in because that seemed too weird for me and I don’t like coffee.
Then I found a whole wheat recipe that was very simple so we made that too. It was good but a bit dense.

I finally made ketchup! I’m not sure if I’ll do it very often as it is quite time consuming considering the amount that ends up being made. I will make it at least one more time though because I want to try it without sugar, but this time I just “followed” a recipe. I used fresh tomatoes instead of canned. I’m not sure what we will do with it as it is too sweet and even Aurora dislikes it. I will try again with no sugar!
I’ve also been making cookies and pies and cakes and personal products but I have to go make supper now so I’ll have to tell you about that in the future!

More Inspiration

I really miss my garden. Our compost problem hasn’t been fully solved but we did buy the special bags so if we continue to guerrilla green bin, we can at least be sure it will be taken.
Anyhow I came across this the other day and wanted to share. It’s very similar to Path to Freedom and very inspiring. If I had a yard at all, I would plant in it. We do have many plants in pots around the house. I guess I could do a “how much food can I grow in my apartment?” experiment. So far it’s just mint, basil, rosemary and lemon thyme. We will have a yard soon enough though (I keep telling myself that).

Maggots or Landfill?

We have still not found a place to properly compost in Kingston. So far, when anyone comes for dinner, we send them home with all of our compost from the freezer to put in their composter. Also the building next door has green bins and does not seem to use them often so we have put 3 bags there.
We noticed no one was taking the green bins out so we pulled them so the curb. Then we noticed the garbage collection people did not take the bins, so we asked why, and were told there should be a tag explaining why.
The tag said biodegradable bags are unacceptable and it wouldn’t be taken until we took the items out of the bag and put it in a special paper bag available at local retailers. Ugg. I was ready to go out and do so, but Kyle is worried because it is not all our compost so we have no idea what is inside and it could be a health hazard. So now we either have to put all the bags in a garbage bag and send it to landfill (which I really don’t think I can do) OR cut open the bags and put them in the special paper bags (which I am also unsure if I can do now that Kyle pointed out the health hazards). Part of me is afraid of finding body parts or dead animal or poo, but mostly I am afraid of maggots. I really really don’t like maggots.
When I was teaching in Korea, I was carving pumpkings with my class for Halloween and one of them was filled with maggots. I was trying to calm the shrieking, knife wielding children down and reassure them, but every time I got close to said pumpkin, I involuntarily shuddered and the shrieking and jumping resumed.
I suppose in this situation, at least there would be no knives (hopefully) and no children involved…..

Starting again, again.

We are now Kingston, Ontario residents. I like the city a lot but it would be much harder to do a month garbage free here.

We live in a 5 story walk up with no yard, no balcony and a flat “NO” from the landlord when we asked if we could compost or garden in the side yard. I have sent one batch of compostables home with my brother and another two batches mysteriously landed in the neighbours green bin in the middle of the night. It is also an apartment building but it is less than 6 units so they have green bins, where as I cannot get one here because there is 25 units in the building. I did talk to one of the residents of the neighbouring building and she said very few people, if any, actually use the green bins and it should be fine if I used it.  So I didn’t have to go in the middle of the night, that just happened to be when I had the time. I am waiting to here back from the near by community garden. Hopefully I can compost there and may be have a plot as well. I really miss our garden. I already had to buy zucchinis here and it just seemed so wrong after having an overabundance of them so recently.

I had no idea how privileged we were living in Toronto.  We had so much variety and choice of where to go to get packaged free goods. If one place didn’t have something, there was always another place to check, and with the TTC it was relatively easy to get just about anywhere. Buses here run every half hour. There are two health food stores but one would take over 2 hours to reach by public transit. The one that is accessible to me (Tara Foods) is awesome and  I can get more than I was expecting, but I can’t get cleaning products in bulk, nor sugar. Actually it doesn’t look like there is anywhere in the city that carries bulk detergent, baking soda, vinegar etc. Oh how I miss Grass Roots. We stocked up before we left, but we already ran out of toilet paper and I had to buy some in plastic wrap for the first time in years (gasp!) My sister is going stock up on bulk supplies at Grassroots and bring it down to us, but I’m not sure how many times I can ask her to do that. Hopefully I can charm someone into carrying what we need in stores here.

Last week, Kyle biked across town to pick up recycling bins for us and although we need to do much more sorting than in Toronto, it seems like a good program. If the don’t take something they will eave a tag explaining why, whihc I think is a great idea. Sometimes it was such a mystery as to why bins were left in TO. In one house we lived in, the garbage was picked up from the driveway every week except once. I called to ask why and they said we needed to pull it out closer to the street. I asked why we had never needed to do that before and they said because the bins were closer before. Apparently they had moved back an inch or so??? Anyhow I digress….

The good news is…FOOD!  There is a farmers market downtown 3 times a week, and they have 6 organic stalls, plus many other combination stalls (some pesticide free).  They have some wonderful baking booths with really delicious pie. It’s not totally trash free because the trays can not be recycled here, but we use them for crafts and painting . There are farms all around us.  I suppose there were in Toronto too but they seemed harder to access. My sister-in-law took Aurora and I apple picking yesterday-it was great! I always assumed the trees would be tall and you would need to climb up high, but they were all short enough that even Aurora could reach. She was especially interested in the outhouse “stinky bapa (bathroom) outtide…poo!”, which I think is a very good description of outhouses in general.

Good Bye Toronto!

The reason I haven’t posted and will not post for awhile is that we are in the midst of a move to Kingston. I will add a Trashless Kingston Page once we get settled.

I will also likely have more to talk about, as I will have to find new places to shop, ways to compost etc.

I will miss Toronto and it’s diversity but I’m looking forward to being in a smaller city, and Kingston is lovely.

Here’s a quick list of what we are doing to try and reduce waste in the move. None of these things are really new to us but I thought I would share in case they are new to someone:

-selling and/ giving away unwanted items (SwapSity, Craig’s List, Freecycle and Facebook) rather than leaving them on the curb (except our 15 year old futon mattress- it is DONE- anyone know a place who recycles or reclaims futon mattresses?)

-using boxes that don’t need as much, if any, packing tape (book boxes from Chapters/Indigo, and Xerox boxes) and reusable Rubbermaids.

-wrapping fragile items in blanket, clothes and towels rather than bubble wrap or newspaper

-cleaning with lemon, baking soda, borax and water-all without packaging.

-NO STYROFOAM!

Thanks to everyone who has helped us with this move and along the way! I’ll miss you Torontonians!

xox, Sarah

PS Feel Free to share your green moving tip swith me as well!

How does your garden grow?

Our dream is to eventually have our own little plot of land and a sustainable house. I want to build with cob but if we stay in this climate we might need straw bale as well/instead. One of the problems is we are both city folk and don’t really know anything about growing food. We took a main floor apartment with a back yard so we could start to learn. We’ve done well with herbs and lettuce, but last year I waited too long to harvest the tomatoes.
This year we planted seeds we had and picked up a few plants from the farmers market. We don’t put the time we should into weeding, and we didn’t do a lot of research so we just randomly planted. Next time I would like to do companion gardening. To save time I just sort of sprinkled the seed pack of “spicy sald mix” instead of planting individual seeds, which resulted a a tangled mess of some edibles and some weeds and we weren’t sure which was which!
We haven’t spent the time we should on the garden-the peas need something to grow up (it may be too late now), we don’t weed enough and we don’t harvest often enough (our spinach has gone to seed,. Despite all of this we have tonnes of food! I’m amazed at how easy it is to grow food with very little space. We have way more lettuce than we can eat. I’m not sure what we were thinking when we planted so much! We have been keeping up with the zucchini (zucchini bread, zucchini muffins, zucchini in every curry and stirfry) so far but only one plant has been producing and the others will start soon. If you are in Toronto and would like some lettuce or zucchini please contact me!
I bought one plant that the Chinese grocer couldn’t explain to me what it was. It looks like it is bitter melon. I hope we like it!
We have lavender and calendula for my salve making, and that is going quite well.
Next year we will be in Kingston and I’m not sure if we will be able to garden in the apartment’s side yard. If not, I will find a community allotment garden. It is getting easier to do things with Aurora. She likes to dig in the dirt and water the plants. It was a bit hard this year because there is broken glass and rusty nails in the garden, not to mention a series of other DANGERS in the backyard.
We haven’t used our compost on the garden as we had at least one rat, and we are afraid of contamination.
Every time I see a little front yard with grass I think about how much food people could plant there and I wish Victory gardens never went out of fashion.

The nitty gritty

I’ve had parts of this post written since February 2008!
It is due time I finish it, especially in wake of the city strike.This is a really hard post to write because I am trying to keep this blog positive and I also don’t want to be peachy so I keep having to take out parts, and redo them. It definitley isn’t my best piece of writing, but here it is, the post about the shortfalls of recycling and industrial composting.
Recycling
Recycling is completely different that reusing. I once talked to a woman who made crackers about the fact that she packaged them in plastic. I told her if I could get them without a package I would buy some. She got offended and said the plastic was recyclable so it would be the same, put it in the recycling bin and get new plastic-voila. Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. The bag doesn’t get washed down and used again. It gets broken down into components and made into something else. Not all of the parts can be used, so the rest is waste. Plus you’ve got all the energy and pollution from the trucks and the recycling plants. It’s not an efficient system. I’m not saying don’t recycle, but don’t just recycle. Reduce as much as possible first and then recycle as a last resort.
The other problem with recycling is that programs accept much more than they can actually recycle just to get people to use the program. If there is too much sorting to do, many people just won’t do it, so the idea is to accept as much as possible even though many of the items accepted can’t actually be recycled.Here is the guide of what can and can’t be accepted I was surprised to see that paper can only be accepted if shredded and put in clear plastic bags. Does this mean none of the paper we’ve been putting in the bin has actually been recycled? I need to call and find out. We do use both sides of paper, and we reuse envelopes, but still once that is done, quite a bit goes in the plus bin.
Styrofoam can now be accepted, as well as plastic bags, but both items are difficult to recycle and the end product is not in much demand. For example plastic bags are made into plastic garden furniture-there are way more bags than the amount of furniture needed. In my research, I’ve discovered the #1 reason for recycling plastics is actually job creation.
The city of Toronto has made a goal to divert waste 70% by 2010. There have recently been media exposes on how they are doing that by including items they accept in compost and recycling but don’t actually divert. The city denies this, but does admit to accepting things that can’t be diverted to encourage people to use the programs.
Composting (green bins)
It really saddened me to see how many people got rid of their backyard composters when the green bin came. The green bin should really be for people who can’t have the other (better) kind of compost and maybe don’t want to deal with worms (vermicomposting). We also use it for egg shells and our flushable cat litter because the shells attract rats to our garden and the flushable litter sometimes clogs the toilet. It’s best to keep things in your own backyard, literally. Pretty much everything (food, waste disposal, household goods) is better and more efficient when done closer to home. As soon as you have to deal with transportation, factories etc, the greenness turns murky.
The other sad thing is seeing how many awesome and smart people decide to use disposable diapers instead of cloth because they are accepted in the green bin. The problem is they are not composted. They are accepted in order to up the numbers, but they get picked out in the filter. I called to ask if maybe some of the inside cotton parts get composted and they were reluctant to tell me, but the final answer was NO. The diaper is basically completely filtered out and sent to landfill. It just took a detour to get there.
Before I go, let me say, I think Toronto is putting forth a valiant effort in trying to divert waste. I just think we all need more information about exactly what is happening, and we need to remember that the first step is reducing. The idea of diverting our waste is a bit funny to me too. I think first off we should try to make less, and then divert what’s left. If I were queen of the city I would impose a big tax on garbage. Then people start leaving their packaging at the store and the stores start pressuring the producers and less packaging is made. I am not actually a genius. This is the exact model Germany used.

Where it’s at.

I’ve update the publicity page a little bit and posted the link for the CBC TV interview Aurora and I did.
Since we completed 31 days garbage free in 2007, I have really branched out in the issues I’m dealing with on a daily basis. What I mean is that I am not so focused on trash now, in fact we make a little bit of it-more than some of our friends. I’ve been trying to take a holistic approach to living, and also have balance in my life. For a while we stopped flushing the toilet with the bath water, and just flushed with the flush and drained the bath water because we were overwhelmed with stuff to do (wash diapers, hang diapers, set baby on potty, empty potty, make meal plans, buy bulk food, make meals, make crackers, cookies, etc. feed baby, walk baby for hours so she will sleep, perhaps sleep myself etc.). I didn’t blog or make music or art for awhile. In the precious hours I finally could sleep, I lay awake in bed thinking about all the stuff I needed to do and all the creative stuff I wanted to do. I think it’s really important to take care of the environment because it’s part of us-it’s a relationship-give a little take a little, but you have to find out where your personal line is and draw it sometimes. Not any one person can “save the world”.
So here’s list of what we do now and we don’t do any more.
We do:
-Use cloths for Aurora’s bum and face and cloth diapers at night or on trips (all other times she is in underpants because we ECed her)
-make our own cleaning supplies from bulk ingredients purchased at Grassroots and refill containers of what we don’t make
-shop in bulk when ever we can
-grow our own food. We’re amateurs but we have quite a bit
-turn lights off and the computer when we are not using it. In fact Kyle and I are always turning the lights off on each other by mistake.
-Use cloth bags for produce when we can and reuse our plastic bags other wise
-still carry cloth grocery bags and never get plastic
-still carry plates and cups for eating on the go
-make the majority of our meals from scratch
-try to buy local and organic (but sometimes end up at No Frills in a pinch)
make our own deoderant, moisturizer and tooth paste and buy recycled toothbrushes
-shop at second hand stores and swap items instead of buying new whenever possible.
-Eat real food
-compost
-use clothes that can’t be worn anymore by anyone, as rags

We Don’t:
-always used dried beans, we often use canned now
-always buy bulk- I’d say we still do about 80% of the time but sometimes we get things like nut butter or oil in jars for convenience
-make our own crackers, we buy them in packages
-make Aurora’s toothpaste-she only likes Weleda kids so we get it for her.
-always flush with gray water. Sometimes we just use the flush(although now that Aurora is a bit more independent we are getting back to reusing the water again)
-make our own rice milk or almond milk anymore. We buy the fortified stuff.
-make our own food and buy bulk at all costs. We still do so the majority of the time but, we now take time for ourselves and each other too. I go out in the evenings sometimes. I work on crafts sometimes, even if that means having to eat the same meal three times in a row, have canned soup for supper or shop at No Frills instead of the Farmer’s Market or health food stores.

I’m sure there’s more but that’s all I can think of right now. I’ have two other posts brewing. One about green bin and recycling programs and one about gardening so stay tuned. I should have more posts soon.

Heads Up

Aurora and I will be on CBC News at 6pm tonight, talking about gardening, making your own stuff, reducing etc.
If you see it and and can recognize which part of my salad mix (in the garden) is edible and which is weeds, please let me know! Or if you are a Toronto food gardener and can spare some time you can come over and look. I’ll pay you in food!