Kids for Climate Change

Last Saturday, my family recognized the International Day of Climate Action by attending a rally at Waterplace Park. Attendance was depressingly sparse, whether from the weather or lack of interest, I do not know. Worldwide on that day, 181 countries participated in over 5200 events calling for strong leadership on the climate crisis. I hope the other Rhode Island events pulled in more enthusiasm.

The point of the whole day was to demand strong action at December’s Climate Change conference in Copenhagen. That’s when a climate treaty (currently being worked on by the United Nations) is supposed to be finalized. The word at present is that the treaty is too weak to be effective. According to scientists, 350 Parts Per Million is the number that leading scientists say is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide. It’s the number humanity needs to get back to as soon as possible to avoid runaway climate change. Right now we’re at 387.

As hard as it is to get people to change their habits, having an official, global agreement grounded in science seems a good place to start. Leaders need to send a strong message to people everywhere in order to have any chance at all. Because getting down to 350 will require big changes across the board.

So, you missed the Day of Climate Action but still want to make your voice heard? Put your child (or pet or yourself) on the cover of Mother Jones magazine, and send the image to your legislators (even to President Obama). Then spread the word to friends and family by emailing the cover image (might make a nice holiday card as well!)


Photos from Day of Climate Action
Some steps you can take to reduce carbon output.

Weekly Update

Sofie had her birthday fairy princess tea party last weekend, which turned out really well. The best part was how the invited families really got into the donation idea — we asked for donation toward pediatric AIDS in lieu of birthday gifts and in honor of Princess Diana, since the girls were learning about real-life princesses. Everyone gave (bringing proof of their donations) with some extolling the idea and voicing how it inspired them for the next birthday. Aside from the good cause, the donations meant we had no gift wrap, no product packaging and no fights over new toys! Am thinking this is definitely the way to go for Christmas too.

Since September 3, we’ve fed our family seven meatless Thursdays, and I must say I’m really enjoying it. The vegetarian meals we’ve tried (many recipes coming from my supportive, veggie sister) are quite filling and incredibly delicious, and most have even given us leftovers. Using the numbers from my earlier post, this means my husband and I have saved 35 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions, 336 square feet of land and 1,862 gallons of water!

Take this quick carbon quiz!

Fall Travels

We’ve just returned from back-to-back road trips: one celebrating my husband’s 40th birthday in New Hampshire’s White Mountains; the other a family reunion in southern New Jersey. Were the trips eco-friendly? Let’s find out.

We certainly emitted less carbon by driving instead of flying – and our Scion xB (with adequately inflated tires) averaged a wallet-friendly 34 mpg on the highway. Traveling in the shoulder season, we didn’t require air conditioning or heat in either location. And we constantly toted along our reusable aluminum water bottles. But it was my husband’s family that took the eco-prize.

My Filipino in-laws tend toward green practices naturally, and for them, it’s not part of the current eco-movement, it’s cultural.

They have never owned a dryer – clothes hang on a line year-round. They keep the thermostat low (often mid-winter, I’ve wondered if it was even on) and just pile on the sweaters. In their backyard garden, they grow the majority of their own vegetables, canning leftovers for winter. And no pesticides here; rather, I’ve seen my father-in-law strike bugs dead with nothing but Zen-like patience and a knife. They are even diehard enough to resort to the significantly eco navy shower. What Sofie could learn if she lived with her paternal grandparents for a while…

However, she seemed happy enough with our own agenda, which was perhaps a little low on green strategies but high on exploration and family togetherness.

In New Hampshire, despite the rain, we got out into nature: easy hiking, apple and pumpkin picking, plus a soak in the complimentary spa hot tub (for the record, hot tubs are typically not eco-friendly, but this one company is making an effort).

Here, I also gave Sofie her first turn behind the camera. This is what she came up with:


In New Jersey, Sofie bonded with her five-year-old cousin Kai and a slew of aunties who spent quality time with her reading books and building log cabins (made of wood, not plastic!).

Overall, the trips were enjoyable, if tiring, and I’d be more than happy to nest in my own eco-aspiring home for the next six months.

Home Green Home

A week ago we had a home energy audit. It’s free, sort of. (You actually already pay for it through your National Grid bill, so might as well take advantage of this service.)

Ron from RISE Engineering probed throughout our house from basement to attic. And what did he discover? That our walls have absolutely no insulation! Fabulous news to hear right after we’ve spent our Obama money on other home improvement projects. Really, I can’t understand how the previous owners (who had the house custom-built for them and lived here 50-odd years) could not have insulated their abode, but for a few measly inches in the attic.

Unfortunately, as oil heat consumers, we are not eligible for the current awesome National Grid discounts on home insulation. However, all you gas and electric heat customers out there should jump on this opportunity now. You’ll get sprayed cellulose insulation, which is environmentally friendly, lasts practically forever and saves up to 40% on your heating costs. It’s such a simple thing to do for your wallet and for the environment.

Ron was impressed that we already used compact fluorescent light bulbs and most of our appliances were Energy-Star rated. (If you haven’t switched already, you’ll receive up to eight free CFLs during the audit.) I’ve been dying to replace the old clothes washer with an efficient, front-loading one, and I could be in luck if this potential Cash for Clunker Appliances money gets released. We also learned that we have excellent, highly efficient windows but our doors and bulkhead need major weatherproofing.

I am left wishing that we’d done this audit when we first bought the house in February so that our money had gone toward something green that would also produce immediate savings for us. I thought I was ahead of the game installing all my CFLs, but that’s just the tip of the home energy iceberg. I blame those extended years of apartment living when someone else often paid the utility bills so I never thought much about it.

So, until we accrue some more savings, I'll try to do some of the inexpensive fix-its (insulating the attic hatch and light switch plates on exterior walls). And repeat to Sofie the lessons my father drilled into me: Turn the lights off! Use cold water instead of hot. Don't flush every time. Keep that refrigerator door closed! Cold? Wear a sweater.


RI National Grid Energy Services
Massachusetts Energy Savings
DIY Home Energy Audit
Cellulose vs. Fiberglass Insulation
Air Leakage Diagram

Birthday for a Princess

With Sofie’s 3rd birthday approaching, we’re hearing lots of talk from our daughter about cake and parties. Big change from the last two years when she hardly knew what a birthday was. Now she’s been indoctrinated through invitations to friends’ parties where cake, ice cream and presents are the norm. This is not what we want our norm to be, but how do we tell her this without crushing her?

My husband would like to honor Sofie’s birthday by taking a trip down memory lane: telling her our stories, sharing video, photos and poems from her birth. I like that. It’s personal; it speaks to the real meaning behind a birthday. But what about the fun factor?

I also wondered how other countries celebrate birthdays and discovered a range of traditions. Unfortunately, the ones relating to Sofie’s ancestry (Filipino, Irish, Italian and Scottish) involve either physical duress (bumps, smacks and ear pulls) or trips to Mass. Hardly inspiring.

So, why do we celebrate birthdays anyway? It seems our ancestors were a highly superstitious bunch, believing themselves to be hunted by evil spirits, particularly when undergoing a life change such as turning a year older. Having a party with loud singing and raucous friends could keep the evil spirits at bay. And while people didn’t routinely bring presents, it was extra fortuitous for the birthday honoree if they did.

Now, we don’t believe in evil spirits, but we do love a party! So I think we can meet Sofie’s desire for one, on a much smaller scale. I once read that the child’s age should determine the number of guests (i.e.: invite 3 kids for the 3rd birthday), which seems manageable to me. Throw in a handful of family and close adult friends and voila!

However, I will be as eco-conscious as possible about this. Email invitations, reusable dishware, cloth napkins, and no disposable decorations. Nature can be our décor as the kids enjoy Sofie’s outdoor swing set, and adults mingle with drinks and music. Perhaps we’ll make a project of creating a reusable birthday banner from cloth. (check out these other green décor ideas.)

And then we come to the presents. Sofie has plenty of toys, plenty of plastic, and we’re trying to rail against the rampant consumerism of such holidays. No need to add more to our closets, much less the landfills. Now might be the time to build in some lessons on social justice. Teach Sofie that so many kids in the world have so little compared to her; encourage her to give to them (guests can donate to a cause in lieu of gifts). She’s already really good at understanding the concept of “too much” stuff. When we picked up a princess scooter at a yard sale, she generously offered to give her old bike to the neighbor boy. And she helped me go through her old toys and videos, selecting which ones to give to her baby cousin since Sofie has outgrown them.

Ooh, but my creative juices are flowing now. I want to tie this party together with a theme, and with my daughter’s current princess obsession, maybe I can introduce Sofie and her friends to some real life princesses such as Princess Diana — who was devoted to causes like AIDS awareness and removing buried land mines in 3rd world countries. Guests could donate to an AIDS organization. The kids can dress up as princesses and listen to one of many Princess Di children’s stories I’ve found at the library. Who says green can’t be fun?

Eco-friendly birthday party ideas
Meaningful gifts

Meatless Thursdays

We’re a family of meat eaters, both coming from a long line of carnivores (except for my vegetarian sister). Mike and Sofie and I love meat, plus Mike is on a high-protein diet in which he eats lots of it. However, yesterday we started Meatless Thursdays as a new tradition in the DeForbes household.

Our reasons have nothing to do with diet or moral issues. It’s environmental; we’re taking another small step to fight global warming.

Last year, the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that meat production accounts for nearly one-fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions. These are mainly emitted during feed production, livestock transportation and animal gases. Those cute grazing cows emit methane, a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon.

If everyone went meatless one day per week, the demand for meat would greatly decrease and do much to offset the threat of global warming. Less demand for meat frees up farmland that could instead be used for growing fuel crops, which would reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, or for vegetation, which would suck up some of those carbon emissions.

Our diets account for almost twice as many greenhouse emissions as driving! Beef is the biggest contributor since cows take up much more space and emit lots more potent methane gases. Every time you eat a meal free of animal products, you save 2.5 lbs. of greenhouse gas emissions, 24 square feet of land and 133 gallons of water. That’s nothing to sneeze at.

In May, Ghent, Belgium became the first city to officially declare and promote a meat-free day. Since then, there has been a growing international movement for Meat Free Mondays, including petitions from 11 countries. (Sign the petition here.) As a family, we reduced our beef consumption years ago, filling our freezer with chicken, pork and turkey instead. But, inspired by the Ghent story, we felt it was time to go a step further, and kicked off Meatless Thursdays with a yummy Mexican bean casserole.

An interesting if somewhat depressing side note: in researching this issue online, almost all of the newspapers and documents that spread the UN’s “Eat Less Meat” mantra were from foreign countries, mainly Europe. Barely a peep from the meat-loving, meat industry-driven USA.

An Unflushable Toilet of Trash

Do you know about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? It’s the largest landfill in the world — a swirling vortex of marine litter in the central North Pacific Ocean. This massive trash gyre stretches from the coast of California, past Hawaii, almost as far as Japan and is now estimated to be twice the size of the continental United States!

Where did all this trash come from? From people, of course — people all over the world carelessly tossing their trash onto coastlines or streets and sidewalks where the rain eventually washes it into the waterways. The wind and ocean currents in the North Pacific are such that floating debris gets trapped into the gyre, an area that sailors avoid like the plague.

The Garbage Patch contains about 3.5 million tons of trash and most of that is plastic, which comprises about 90% of all marine trash. In some areas, the amount of plastic outweighs the amount of plankton by a ratio of six to one.

Last year, Junk, a 30-foot vessel floating on a raft of 15,000 salvaged plastic bottles, made a three-month-long California-to-Hawaii voyage to raise awareness about plastics fouling our oceans. Some of their findings and photos are just astonishing. And highly depressing.

I know Sofie is at least attuned to trash. When we were at the PawSox game last weekend, she pointed out unreachable areas of the stadium where piles of bottles, soda cans, napkins, etc. had collected. “Look at all that trash, Mommy!” She wants to know why is it on the ground? Why not in a trashcan? And adds, “Somebody needs to clean that up!”

But cleaning can only go so far. Reducing the amount of trash in the first place is key. A concept I’m trying to explain to Sofie as she receives her drinks in a reusable container instead of the juice boxes she lusts after. I myself am still guilty of buying plastic water bottles and cheap plastic toys, among other things. And even though I recycle them, who knows how many fall along the wayside from can to truck to dumpsite? Better to just stop buying them altogether.

Watch a VIDEO of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
FAQs about the Garbage Patch
Ideas on How to Stop Using Plastic
Children's Book: All The Way to the Ocean

Potty Talk

There’s news in the DeForbes household: Sofie has officially proclaimed herself a Big Girl. After several weeks of focused potty learning (I am averse to the word “training” – I have a daughter, not a dog), Sofie, Mike and I are celebrating this milestone. Not just for developmental reasons but for the eco ones too:

I never have to buy disposable diapers again.

Okay, she’s still wearing a pull-up at night, but I have immediate plans to buy a few pairs of waterproof underwear so that I never have to buy disposable diapers again. Yay! That’s one less child’s plastic pull-ups in the landfill!

The whole potty learning process went quite smooth. Sofie was an eager pupil who moved at her own pace with lots of encouragement from me, Daddy, her teachers and Elmo. She just loves her potty (wherever the location), but mostly she loves being a Big Girl. She enjoys going at the same time I do, likes reading while on her potty and takes great care in making daily selections of her Dora and Princess underwear.

Now that we’ve got the basics down, we’re working on details like toilet paper quantity. I’ve informed Sofie that trees die to make toilet paper. However, she doesn’t seem too saddened by this – eek! The child is already desensitized. Right now she vacillates between rolling off a huge wad of paper to tearing off a piece no bigger than her nose.

Unfortunately, I did not do any green research before buying our potties (a portable 3-in-1 set for the bathroom and a folding seat for travel). I wish I had, because look what I found — an eco-friendly potty made from plant waste – it lasts for several years and when you’re done, you plant it in your garden! Those Brits are always one eco-step ahead of us. Safety 1st even has a new environmentally friendly line of products, including a 3-in-1 potty made from bioplastics and easily accessible from Walmart.

Other options? A bamboo potty seat or this biodegradeable disposable potty made from compostable cardboard. Cute, although I think buying just one reusable seat and washing it regularly is a cheaper and reasonable green option. Yes, it’s plastic, but just think of the number of disposable cardboard potties you’d be throwing away – unless your child never leaves the house. I hope, at least, to recycle our potties by passing them on to my sister and niece. Or perhaps find some way to cleverly disguise them as planters in the garden.

Meanwhile I get to enjoy those moments when Big Girl Sofie wanders into the bathroom to observe and comment on my potty-using. “You pooped!” she exclaims with glee. “Good job, Mommy!”

Green Pull-ups and Training Pants
Some Toilet Learning Tips
Bamboo Nappies and Training Pants

Arsenic and Old Wood

My husband and I have decided it’s time to get our daughter a swing set. Swinging is her favorite thing to do. If Sofie were in charge, we’d never leave the playground. At school, she spends much of her day amusing herself on the wooden play structures, inside and out. Just imagine the free time having a structure in our yard might provide us!

I grew up with one of those metal swing sets that are abundant on Craigslist these days. However they are merely that - swings and a slide. No climbing structure for agility. No clubhouse for imaginative play. Mike and I provide Sofie with much mental and emotional stimulation. Our chosen swing set needs to provide a good physical outlet to maintain her interest outdoors.

So the next decision then is wood or plastic? My instinct was to assume wood was the greener choice, however, that’s not necessarily true. Consider that most wooden swing sets are treated with chemicals to help preserve the wood, particularly CCA — chromated copper arsenate or, in layman’s terms, arsenic. A comprehensive study by the EPA concluded that children easily absorb this human carcinogen into their bodies just from playing on these wooden swing sets – the exposure increases their risk of lung and bladder cancer later on.

An even scarier fact: A 12-foot section of pressure-treated lumber contains about an ounce of arsenic, or enough to kill 250 people. Lovely. (Read other scary facts and learn about some preventative measures.)

The good news is that consumer products manufactured with CCA-treated wood were apparently phased out in 2004. However, this means I won’t be recycling anyone’s used wooden swing set from Craigslist. Green as that may be, the health hazards are too great. (By the way, this same CCA-treated wood can be found in older decks, picnic tables and gazebos as well.)

Now there is one company – CedarWorks - whose wood is chemical free, and they follow other eco values such as running their facilities on bio-fuel and planting seedlings for every swing set sold or catalog requested. Plus you can customize your own set to fit your needs.
Sounds fabulous!

However, this is where the size of our yard presents a problem. Our house is centered on a 6,000 square foot lot, so there is no large backyard. The side yard, which offers the most space, also has a maple tree rooted dead center, greatly reducing our options. A small set is all we can do, barely leaving enough room for the six-foot safety zone. And there doesn’t seem to be anything small on the CedarWorks Web site. Also, there are no prices listed for their “premier” sets, which surely means mucho mullah. * sigh * Why can’t green be cost-efficient too?

In terms of plastic play sets, I found this woman-owned, family-owned company that creates playgrounds out of recycled plastic. They offer a range of cute play systems but they appear to be largely for public sites and day care centers with prices to match. Here’s another company that offers DIY eco-friendly composite structures, way out of my price range, but maybe not for some of you.

Ideally, a DIY ecologically-minded person would build a play structure him or herself, using sustainable wood and salvaged or recycled products. Sadly, neither Mike nor I am that person.

But this research has given me plenty to think about. Whether we find it in our budget to support green companies and products like CedarWorks or choose to go for a less expensive, plastic option with good recyclable resale value (Step2 and Little Tykes), our daughter will soon be climbing and swinging to her heart’s content.


Fact Sheet About CCA-Treated Wood
Sustainable Wooden Swing Sets from Walmart

Weekly Update

Since becoming Scion owners less than 3 weeks ago, we have averaged 31 mpg – and that’s mostly city driving. Yay! Looking forward to seeing how the xB performs on the highway (and interior cargo space) when we go camping in the Berkshires next month.

In the meantime, I need to consider how to keep this car clean (the Corolla was so ghetto-looking, that we just didn’t care). I discovered Simple Green Car Care -- a gentle, biodegradeable soap inside a fully recyclable bottle. Yet washing your car in your driveway is the worst thing you can do for the watershed – car washes are better since the runoff gets treated before being discharged into the environment. But the best option appears to be this waterless car wash that I’m tempted to try.

In other news, since the rain ended a week ago, I have been focused on sun safety – am I using the right sunscreen for Sofie? I’ve been using Baby Blanket Sunblock, mainly because I got a carton of it for free. Now that I’m seeking products with less chemicals, I went to Environmental Working Group’s Web site only to find that many of the most popular brands are either cancer-causing or falsely touting their UVB/UVA and SPF protection. Here’s a few of the recommended brands that rated the lowest in sun and health hazards. (Badger Sunscreen, available at Whole Foods, appears to be the best.)

Happy Summer!