Category Archives: Green Ideas

Buying chocolate

It’s no secret that I love chocolate.  Unfortunately, the farming and transport required to produce chocolate in the United States takes a heavy environmental and social toll, including deforestation and unfair labor practices.  So what’s a chocoholic to do?

First, eat less.  I’m not ready to give up chocolate completely (and I may never be ready for that), but reducing consumption is a step in the right direction.  Easier said than done, perhaps, but to help with moderation . . .

Second, buy high quality chocolate that is grown and produced responsibly and sustainably.  Look for Fair Trade-certified products*.  Sure, this will cost more, but that provides built-in incentive to eat less.

In our quest to buy better chocolate, we found Sweet Earth Chocolates.  Not only is their chocolate in line with our values, it also tastes great (taste is key)!  We’ve been ordering chocolate chips and baking chocolate from them for over a year now.

We just placed our third order (we order a large quantity to last several months), this time for 8-9 pounds of chocolate.  The order total gave me pause, but we will stretch that chocolate out in various baked goods over the next ten months.

We’ve also been meaning to talk to Local Harvest Grocery about carrying some of the chocolate chips in bulk to defray the cost and environmental impact of the shipping involved in our relatively small orders, as well as making the product more accessible to others in St. Louis.

*For more sources of Fair Trade chocolate (and other products), check out this list.

Psst, psst: EC at six months

UPDATE: Hello to all BERF readers!  Because of all the interest in EC, I’ve just added a new post that synthesizes what I’ve learned thus far.  Thanks for visiting Her Green Life. 

So, this post originally had a “five” in the title, but five has come and gone.  At this point, we’re actually closer to seven months than six, but who’s counting?

I’ve been sitting on this post, waiting to have a “Dude on the pot” photo to include, but I’m afraid no photo is quite appropriate.  Most potty opportunities in the past weeks ended with him making his body completely rigid and refusing to sit on the pot.  I finally started joking around with it, holding his rigid little body up over the pot, saying, “Light as a feather, stiff as a board,” except more than half the time, I caught myself saying, “Light as a board, stiff as a feather.”

Anyway, when he resists, we’re not forcing it, but our enthusiasm for offering the potty has definitely waned.  We still offer sometimes, but our number of catches is quite low.  Many of the books talk about “potty pauses,” but I assumed those were numbered in days, maybe a week or two, not weeks or months.  We shall see . . . .

**EC stands for Elimination Communication.  If you’re new to the blog, you can read more about it in the “Psst, psst” series:

Lids at last

Don’t let the food fool you, this post is actually about the container.  Though I must confess that I still own and use plastic (gasp!) containers on a regular basis, I am adamant about glass for some things, particularly warm or hot food.

I just don’t trust plastic, even the “BPA-free” plastic.  I figure it just contains some yet-to-be discovered, and perhaps worse, toxin leaching into my food.  I cringe when I see coworkers nuking their lunches in plastic containers — yikes!

Unless the food cools to room temperature first (at which point we’re probably in the bacteria-growth danger zone), we store all of our leftovers in glass containers.  We also use glass to transport our lunches for easy microwave heating at work.

Though it’s a compromise because it still involves plastic, we’ve found that glass containers with plastic lids work well.  This container style forms a relatively good seal for transporting the food to and from work, which can involve a good bit of jostling.  If we fill the containers to the brim, we refrigerate and put the lids on after the food is cool, and we remove the lids before reheating the food — one of those “not perfect, but good enough” solutions.

With normal use  and wear (i.e., not getting dropped on a hard surface), the glass containers have quite a long life.  That makes the plastic the weakest link.  After a couple of years of regular use, the plastic lids started showing their age, cracking at the edges, no longer forming a good seal.

Over a year ago, I searched for replacement lids in vain, frustrated that I couldn’t buy just a lid to go with the container that was still in perfectly good shape.  I’m rather certain I contacted the company directly and was told they didn’t make replacements — argh!  In the meantime, we wanted to expand our glass container collection and reluctantly purchased two sets of the same style, knowing about the lid issue.

For some reason, Matthew or I resumed the lid hunt a couple of months ago, and this time we our search ended in success! (3/4/14 Link Update: find replacement lids here.)

To maximize the shipment, we ordered a couple of spare lids for each size of glass container, including some for my MIL who has the same containers with the same lid issues.  (Speaking of the shipment — ridiculously over-packaged!  Must remember to add “please minimize/avoid plastic when packing.”)  While it’s frustrating knowing that these lids will also wear out, I’m happy to get more good use out of the glass.

Green Grinch musings

One of our basement storage spaces holds a small stockpile of Christmas-themed gift bags and tissue paper that I painstakingly smooth out and fold whenever we receive gifts.  While reusing these materials certainly qualifies as green, it also perpetuates the standard that gifts be wrapped (or bagged) in a disposable way.

If I don’t want to receive gifts in disposable wrapping, why would I continue to give gifts concealed in that manner, regardless of the used vs. new status of the gift bags and tissue paper?

Lying in bed last night, I solved my present-wrapping dilemma.  We have numerous receiving blankets (hand-me-downs, not new material) that are far too small to be useful for The Dude.  Sure, they have pastel colors and baby-themed prints on them instead of the traditional red and green, but the Green Grinch doesn’t really get hung up on little details like that.  The blankets will be the perfect size for most of my gifts, and with a few safety pins or bits of ribbon to secure them, I’ll be good to go!

In the spirit of a holiday with “more joy and less stuff,” check out these suggestions from The Center for a New American Dream.

Finally, a bit of food for thought, first a health-related article, then, an environment-related article (these are non-Christmas related, because I am, after all, the Green Grinch 😉 ).

From “Treating a Nation of Anxious Wimps” (follow link to read full article):

Yet the great secret of medicine is that almost everything we see will get better (or worse) no matter how we treat it. Usually better. The human body is exquisitely talented at healing.

The bottom line is that most [acute] conditions are self-limited . . . . Taking drugs for things that go away on their own is rarely helpful and often harmful.

From “Will nature always be the last book on the shelf?” (follow link to read full article):

Here were brand-new books on some of the most important challenges facing society today — now priced to move at about $2.50 — and they’d been left behind by the swarming scavengers, lingering on the shelves in the company of the odd, obscure, and obsolete.

It made real for me the now ubiquitous adage that conservation must strive to be more relevant to people.

All I want for Christmas

Would that be the two bottom teeth?  Or the two top teeth?  Either way, The Dude has it covered now (photo evidence of the bottom teeth in yesterday’s photo).  I’m glad that’s all he wants for Christmas, because that’s all he’s getting, at least from Mommy and Daddy.

I’m definitely a Christmas slacker this year.  We don’t have a Christmas tree (no room in the inn!) or any decorations.  We do have a few strings of colored LED lights in our front room, but we pretty much leave those up all winter, to combat the dark dreariness, so they don’t count as holiday decorations.

I planned to take a cute picture of The Dude in a Santa hat, and send it out as a Christmas greeting, but we don’t own a Santa hat, and I haven’t gotten around to buying, or, ideally, borrowing, one.

It all feels like just one more thing this year — something for which I have neither the time nor energy.  I feel a little guilty, a bit like Scrooge or The Grinch — after all, this is “Baby’s First Christmas,” which only happens once.

The thing is, he will remember absolutely nothing about the holidays this year. And, to be fair, we’ll be spending Christmas at my parents’ house, where we can enjoy their tree and decorations. Plus, the various sets of grandparents will make sure that there are presents under the tree with The Dude’s name on them.

Also, while I can do without the commercialism and consumerism of the holidays, I am excited to experience them through the eyes of a child in the years ahead, so I am NOT a total Grinch.  I anticipate celebrations filled with the love, warmth, and family traditions that really make this season special.  Until then, I hope The Dude enjoys his two four front teeth 😉

Update: I may not be the first to claim the title, but I dubbed myself the Green Grinch — it has a nice ring to it!