September a Guilt-Free Chocolate Month!

At the beginning of this month, I finished a personal challenge to go A Year Without Chocolate.

Now I'm ready to step up to another chocolatey challenge: Dixiebelle's Guilt Free Chocolate Month.

The challenge? To only consume "chocolate and chocolate products that are Slave free, Fair Trade and where possible, organic/ local!"

Dixiebelle has the right idea. We need to take a stance against:

• chocolate that supports slavery,
  
• chocolate that cheats farmers from a fair pay, and
  
• chocolate that creates toxic waste.
  

Chocolate isn't delicious when it is cruel, unfair and toxic. That melt in your mouth feeling becomes a bitter aftertaste that won't go away.

I'm lucky. I have a friend who sings with me at City Choir and sells Trade Aid chocolate to us at choir - we don't even need to go shopping!

Another friend sings with me at St. Paul's Cathedral and works at Trade Aid as a volunteer. Together we've discussed the finer points of chocolate lust. Her favourite is peppermint. Mine is the orange. Both varieties are vegan, gluten-free, guilt-free (apart from our waistlines!) and delicious.

I'm especially lucky that there's a push for our own city of Dunedin to become New Zealand's first Fair Trade city.

Our pushes targeting major chocolate companies are working. Cadbury's Dairy Milk Chocolate will go Fair Trade in 2010, and we hope this will be the first of many Cadbury lines. We'll be encouraging other companies to follow suit. Thumbs up for Cadbury's!

So - are you up to Dixiebelle's Challenge? If you are, drop by her blog and sign on - make September a Guilt Free Chocolate Month!

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Our potted food garden, and Chuck Norris

We haven't had rain for a couple of days, so I had to water my potted garden this morning. It was so bright and sunny, and I took a few photos to share with you.



Here is our single lettuce that is getting close to eating size, a survivor that made it through the winter - outside through the snow! That's one Chuck Norris of a lettuce!

I've no idea what species it is - any ideas? It's a self-sown from a variety packet, so I guess I'll just call it "mystery lettuce"! Or maybe just "Chuck"!



The raspberries are already starting to bud and get leaves on them. I'm completely new to raspberries, and will have to do some reading up on them. I grew up in Adelaide, which was way too dry for raspberries - although I'm sure some very capable people manage to grow them there!

Here in Dunedin, though, raspberries grow wild by the roadside, and we have a perfect climate for just about every type of berry imaginable.



The strawberries are getting bigger already - I'm sure they've doubled in size since last week! I'm also new to strawberries, and if I can keep them alive and get any fruit at all it will be a miracle!

However, strawberries are supposed to be very easy to grow here, so I'm hoping our climate will be kind to this beginner potted farmer!

Everything is a bit crammed in at the moment - I'll have to buy some more pots as everything grows, and transplant as the seeds I have planted sprout and get bigger.

I'm hoping that at least some of the berries we grow will make it to table. But with two preschoolers on the prowl, it's anyone's guess!

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How to cook tofu - Asian Barbecue Style!

Here's a favourite family recipe I'm going to share with you, and then I'll talk a little about tofu, and how to store it properly.

Give this recipe a try, and you'll be wondering where tofu was all your life!

Asian Barbecued Tofu - Yummy!

Ingredients:

• 300 grams / 10 oz. firm tofu
  
• 2 teaspoons sesame oil (approximately)
  
• 2 tablespoons tamari or soy sauce (approximately).
  
  We choose to use tamari in all our Asian cooking. The tamari we use is wheat free, and suitable for the gluten-free diet that my young son is on. But either soy or tamari works well. (Note that not all tamari brands are gluten-free, it pays to check if this is important to you).
  
  Method:
  
• Slice the tofu into long thin slices, a bit less than a centimeter (1/3 inch) in width.
  
• Lay the tofu in a non-stick pan, and cook at a medium heat until very lightly browned, turning regularly so both sides lightly brown.
  
• When very lightly browned, drizzle sesame oil over the slices, turn over to coat on both sides, then cover in tamari (soy sauce). The slices will sizzle and brown quickly! You'll need your windows open, and it might get smoky!
  
  
  Drizzled with tamari and sesame oil, you're almost done!
  
• Remove from heat, and place on serving platter. You're done!
  

Delicious, asian barbecue tofu, served with salad!

Serves 3-4.

This recipe is a great option to serve to vegetarians at barbecues, because it is so easy. It's also quick!

At home, we cook our tofu, then serve it on a bed of fresh mixed lettuce, with a tossed salad. Delicious!

Why tofu?

Meat alternative: Tofu is a vegetarian mainstay. It can be used instead of any meat. The wonderful thing about tofu is it will easily take on the flavours of any sauces you add to it. It also cooks through well, and is easily digested. Because it is so easily digested, tofu is great for elderly people with such illnesses as Crohn's Disease.

Gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan: Tofu is a gluten-free, vegan food that has been consumed by people for thousands of years, served in thousands of ways. Yummy!

Bad tofu, man!: If you've had a "bad experience" with tofu, blame the cook! They simply didn't know how to prepare it properly. A lot of people don't know what to do with it, as it is new to the Western world.

I went to one music camp where it was served to the vegetarians among us plain and raw in wobbly, cold chunks. I wouldn't want to eat cold, wobbly, raw chicken either! Ugh!

Which tofu? We mainly use firm tofu at home, and usually buy ours from the local Farmer's Market in bulk. Other types exist, such as silken tofu, which is great for scrambles, cakes and smoothies.

Home made tofu!: You can actually make tofu really easily and cheaply, and I'll explain how to do this (with photos) in another post. Tofu is just soy beans that have been ground with water, then have had a natural coagulant added. Tofu can easily be made from most types of beans, but soy is preferred, because of the cost (they're cheap) and high protein content.

Is tofu dangerous? No, unless you're allergic to soy. People have been eating tofu for thousands of years, and no-one has died from it yet. In fact, soy foods are a vital component of many societies' traditional diets, and continue to increase in popularity.

The US Food and Drug Administration claims that eating tofu (and other soy foods) may reduce cholesterol and the risk of heart disease, which is good. But I'd argue that it is the sum of your diet that decided these issues, rather than one particular food. Eating healthily is, as it has always been, about balance. We tend to eat tofu about once a week.

Needless to say, soy is a healthy food, and has been judged as such by various health authorities all over the world. Eat it in moderation (yes please!), and get most of your calories from fresh fruit and veggies!

Storing tofu: To store fresh tofu, take it out of its packaging, and cover it with fresh, cold water. Change the water daily. It will store like this for several days in an air-tight container in the fridge, or a cool cupboard.

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Fighting renter mentality: Phase 1 of the war

As I've mentioned before, we're living in a rental while we scour the property market for a home.

Only last week I talked about the problem of having a landlady who seems to want us to farm grass. And we were dutifully following her rules, but I wasn't at all happy with the situation!

Well! I've made my mind up about what to do, helped by some great suggestions that you all commented with, and here is the result so far:

The potted garden, newly "assembled", with one of my "helpers"

Thank you so much for all your suggestions in my "Renter Mentality" post! At the time, although I don't think I said much, I was pretty depressed about our lack of food plants.

In short, an agreement for a house we were hoping to buy (with two WHOLE acres!) had just fallen through. Our decision, not theirs (problems with land stability), but it was getting me down.

However, I read your comments and ideas, and it helped so much! I also visited the wonderful website Path To Freedom (go have a look!), where the Dervaes family prove just how much food can be grown on a suburban section.

And I felt ashamed instead of depressed.

Then I took a good, long, honest, look in the mirror, told myself "Snap out of it!", and set to work!


Strawberries and cranberries, ready to get potted

The deck used to be empty, apart from a few lettuces, turnips and silverbeet, and a couple of herbs.

Now I'm growing:

• Raspberries
  
• Blueberries
  
• Strawberries
  
• Cranberries
  
• Black currants
  
• 6 types of lettuce
  
• Silverbeet
  
• Turnips
  
• Tomatoes and cherry tomatoes
  
• Peas and sugarsnap peas
  
• Onions
  
• Broccoli,
  
• Yams and
  
• Cucumbers.
  

21 species, all in pots and planters. Some to be transplanted to the garden with trellises as they grow.


Blueberries, planted by my 4 year old son, who wants to be a farmer (this week, anyway)

I'm also growing a few trees in pots - I'm giving a meyer lemon a try, simply because our deck is so sunny. Dunedin is really, really borderline for lemons (and citrus generally!) - we're nearly 46 degrees south. But if lemons will grow anywhere this far south, our deck is the spot for them.

Other trees I have in pots include a feijoa and an olive tree. I've always wanted an olive grove, actually, and you can trust that when we finally buy a home, my singular olive tree will soon get company!

I haven't attacked our garden yet. The grass is still there. But not for lack of me wanting to! It's just that the trees that are hardier and ready to go straight in (apples, plums) are also bigger, and I can't fit them in the car boot without damaging them.

I'll be making a special expedition to the garden centre in a couple of weekends' time to order a delivery of these larger trees. I'll be looking for apples, plums, and pears.

My landlady may well get nasty at me when she sees them - I guess I'll just have to weather that storm when I come to it!

I'm also gardening herbs. This, at least, I'm not new to - I've dealt successfully (and unsuccessfully!) with herbs before. I'm growing:

• Lavender
  
• Parsley
  
• Spearmint
  
• Peppermint
  
• Curry plant
  
• Chives.
  

All in all, 30 species! Not bad for starters! I can't say I'll be successful, and that I won't have heavy losses. I'm new at this food farming business in this climate.

I'm also new to growing berries and most of the foods I'm trying to grow, as I grew up in a Mediterranean climate (Adelaide, South Australia), and everything was different. But I'm learning by doing, and mistakes are one of the best ways to learn.

Did it cost much?

The short answer is, yes.

I spent over $300 on plants and containers and potting mix. The containers were the most expensive part. Setting up a container garden is not cheap.

However, I was fortunate enough to have some savings put by - money that I have saved by not drinking anything but tap water!

I wouldn't have believed I was spending so much at the pub each week until I worked out how much I've been saving and putting aside. And I'm less than a month into The Water Challenge!

I've also made some money selling secondhand kids' clothes and baby items, now my daughter has grown out of them.

Cheaper when you share

In the old times, when communites were stronger, people used to pass strawberry runners and raspberry canes around the community. They used to share cuttings and seedlings too, to save money.

Now we have to buy them. I'd like to see stronger community ties established, but that's something I'm still working on in our community, as I'm a new member here.

It also cost me more because I had to buy all my pots from scratch. I had plenty in Australia, but had to leave them behind - quarantine regulations do not let such garden items into New Zealand.

Thinking the problem through

I think one of the biggest problems we humans face is that we treat this whole world with a renter mentality. It's like we can just do as much damage as we want, then pack our bags, and bugger off somewhere else.

But this is our home planet - our only home - now and forever. Science fiction talks of terra-forming other planets and sending generation ships off in search of new solar systems to colonise. But that's story-telling - there's a reason they call it science fiction!

No more excuses!

I was using the excuse that I lived in a rental to stop me from growing food and being more sustainable. I was also using the excuse that my landlady doesn't like it.

But so what? What is she going to do? Kick us out because we planted fruit trees? I'd like to see that happen! I think if that happened we'd have a real good case at the tenants' tribunal!

Sure, my little deck garden and my few fruit trees aren't much, but they're something. They're a start. When we leave this house, we'll take a whole stack of established, potted fruit trees and vegetable plants. And we'll leave the legacy of fruit trees growing in a back yard where there was nothing but grass.

I think that's somthing to be proud of. It makes me glad in a real, whole, solid way. And it gives me hope.

The war has only just begun

This is only Phase 1 of my war against renter mentality. I've only just begun. And all wars are a journey. I like to think of this as a war, because the troubles our world faces are just such an emergency. If we don't take them seriously, our world stands no chance.

Phase 2 will see me digging the garden, and putting fruit trees in, leaving a legacy for people who follow us into this rental home. It may even see me coming to loggerheads with our landlady, although I hope not! Life may be about to get even more interesting!
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Carrot and orange soup, with leeks!

The things you learn in Church can surprise you!

I sing in St. Paul's Cathedral Choir as a soprano. It's a voluntary commitment that takes up almost nine hours a week of my life, but I love it so much!

On Thursday nights, after Evensong and before rehearsal for Sunday's services, we get fed. I guess we have to, or the music in rehearsal would be drowned out by the rumbling of our tums!

We're supplied by an army of wonderful, volunteer parishioners who do a great job feeding all we hungry chorally types. Last night's dinner was an absolutely delicious carrot and orange soup - so good that I begged the cook for her recipe, and tried it out today for tonight's dinner.

I've altered it a little, because we had two leeks sitting around that needed using, so I shoved them in too. I don't think my friend, one of the many Cathedral Chefs, will mind too much! Give the recipe a try - with or without leeks!

Carrot and Orange Soup - with Leeks!

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 kilograms (3 pounds) of carrots
  
• 2 leeks (my addition)
  
• 2 cups orange juice
  
• Water.
  
  
  Everything chopped and bubbling away!
  
  Method:
  
• Wash the leeks, chop off the stems and discard the rest to the compost. Chop the leeks finely into rings, and pile them into a big soup pot, with two cups of water.
  
• Turn the pot containing the leeks onto a medium-high heat.
  
• Wash and chop the carrots into rounds, discarding the tops. Don't bother peeling, unless they're really dirty - I never do!
  
• Once the carrots are chopped, add them to the pot, together with 2 cups of orange juice.
  
• Bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer until carrots are soft.
  
• Once the carrots are soft, turn off the heat, and pulp the soup with a stab mixer until blended.
  
• You're done!
  

The soup, blended and ready to eat!

The soup is guaranteed to serve a horde of hungry choristers, with fresh, crusty bread! Or a family like mine, all of whom have bottomless pits for stomachs. Take your pick.

I love these easy soups, and usually make them close to the weekends. Making big batches like this means we'll have nice, hot lunches for a couple of days, or I can freeze portions for my hungry Geekly husband to take to work. All good!

Now who said Church was dull? Not when you make friends and learn excellent and simple recipes like this, as well as building community and having wonderful music and food for the soul, it isn't!

If you'd like to read more about the life of a busy soprano, visit my other blog, The Chorister.

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Choosing a right livelihood

Can a person truly be green if their day job destroys the planet or is part of the war machine? And what should they do about it?

The ethics of working in the mining industry

I used to work for a mining consultancy firm back in the 1990s.

I was in charge of their library, cataloguing all the mining documents, and did some administrative work too. It was a good place to work, the people were lovely, they treated me well, and I was paid reasonably. I have good memories of the place.

This was when I lived in Australia. The mining sector is at the heart of Australia's economy. The mining sector represents almost 20% of the Australian stock exchange, with almost one third of the companies listed. To say that it is important to Australia's economy is an understatement.

Yet mining is also devastating to the environment.

At the time, I was in my 20s, and only a fledgling "greenie". I was making the connection between the coal mines my company was profiting from and the environmental issues I was starting to vocalise about politically, but I was still quite happy to work for the company. After all, I wasn't the one doing the mining!

I remember my supervisor having a notepad on her desk that bore the logo "Everything starts with mining." She had little time for activists.

As she said, quite truly, the activists turn up to protests on their metal bikes and ring each other on their mobiles and our whole society (Australia) is all supported by coal-fired electricity. Nothing they do would be possible without mining.

Babies or bombs?

Fast-forward five years. I was working for a software company as a technical writer.

Much of the work this company did was related to the military, developing the software for such things as UAVs. UAVs are Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, which have various military applications such as bomb delivery systems.

My ethics were becoming more and more uncomfortable. Finally, in the middle of 2006, I made the hard emotional connection between the software I was working on and the clever weaponry killing babies in Iraq. I looked at my own baby son, and knew something was very wrong with how I was earning a living.

I quit my job. I moved into the education sector, into a position at a University. I vowed to myself that I would never again take a position where my ethics were compromised. And I never have.

Some people would say I was wrong to quit my job at that software company. After all, I was just a technical writer - I wasn't the one buying the weapons, or selling them! I was just doing the writing. How innocuous is that?

But I was a contributor. In a very real sense, I was part of the massive military machine that is responsible for millions of deaths around the world.

Can we be green or peaceful if our money comes from polluting businesses or the war machine?

Are we green if our income is from the mining industry?
Do all our efforts to live simply and ethically count for nothing if we have a big dirty secret in every check we receive each fortnight?

And how can we hope to be peace-loving people if we march in protest on the weekend, but design intelligent weaponry 9 to 5 on weekdays? Does it matter where our money comes from?

Should our living be in accordance with our values?

"If I didn't do it, someone else would"

There's this incredibly true line in Dr. Seuss's The Lorax, when The Onceler says, talking to himself, "The things that you do are completely UN-good!

Yeah, but if I didn't do them, then someone else would!"

This is the excuse that we've all used at some stage. If we didn't do it, someone else would. It's also allowing the rule of the lowest common denominator to guide our actions.

By following this rule, we're saying that we'll do anything that someone else will do, simply because some other mythical person, somewhere else, will do it. We're shuffling ourselves down to the absolute lowest level of ethical behaviour.

In the end, I wasn't happy being part of the problem. I didn't want to earn my living supporting a company that profited from finding better ways to kill people.

At least part of the reason we become environmentally aware in the first place is because we want to make things better in the world. We want to leave the world in better shape for our descendants.

Ethics are a full time job

I can't have part-time ethics. I can't try to be green at home, but turn a blind eye to my day job. Being green has to be part of everything I do, or I'm a hypocrite.

At the moment I'm a stay-at-home Mum. There are heaps of areas of my life that are works in progress regarding environmentalism. My whole life is a "work in progress!" Isn't everyone's?

But if we don't look at where our income is coming from, we're missing perhaps the biggest area of all.

There is almost always a choice!

We're lucky to live in wealthy countries, where people have a huge choice of occupations and earning possibilities.

Sometimes we have to change careers altogether, and that can be a frightening prospect. I've changed career path three times already in my life, and worked in half a dozen companies already - and I'm only in my thirties! But if we are not willing to change in order to make our world a better place, we may as well give up the fight for our planet here and now.

If you're in a career field that is truly unsustainable, now is the time to move paths. Quit while you're ahead, and explore options for sustainability and happiness. Only you know what you'd love to do, and what you are capable of. But times are changing fast, and industries that pollute and foul our world are on borrowed time.

When I left that software company all those years ago, I was afraid. I didn't know what lay ahead of me, and didn't know what a new job would entail. But I'm glad I made the move.

Since then I have moved homes, cities, and countries. And changing jobs seems like such a little thing now. But such a positive move!

A positive future

I'll close this post with a dream and a hope for the future.

Just imagine, for a moment, if everyone in the world said no.

If we all of us said that we will no longer work in companies that pollute the world, and make bombs that kill babies. That we won't mine coal and export water. That we won't design GM terminator seeds or chemical weapons. That we won't build that next nuclear reactor. And that we won't chop down that virgin rainforest.

Every transformation starts with one person. We can transform our world - we really can - but to do so we need to be honest about every part of our lives, including the part where our money comes from.

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A plea for prawns

I come from a city called Adelaide. And back in the early 1990s (not that long ago) I was going out with a guy called David whose father worked at the big power station at Torrens Island.

His home freezer, when I visited his house, was absolutely full of bags and bags of cooked prawns. More than I'd ever seen in my life in one place. A whole chest freezer of 'em!

I loved prawns, and right then and there, the moment I caught sight of the contents of that freezer, I was ready to marry this guy. I had visions of a prawn-filled happy existence, for ever and ever. Amen!

It turned out, as he told me, that the prawns came home from work with his Dad. The power station had these huge cooler vents through which sea water was piped from the Gulf St. Vincent.

And all those prawns went swimming in through the vents, were cooked alive by the hot water as they got sucked through - Pop! Sizzle! And the men who worked at the station bagged them up and took them home. Free seafood smorgasbord.

Fifteen years later

Adelaide imports prawns now.

Go to any supermarket, and you'll notice almost all the prawns come from Thailand, or Indonesia, or China.

In less than twenty years - it seems such a short time - we have gone from having a gulf absolutely full of prawns to importing the animals.

It wasn't just the power station, of course. That's a ridiculous thought. But while the power station was sucking those zillions of prawns through the vents and while David's Dad was bagging them and bringing them home, a flotilla of fishing boats was doing the same thing.

The money was running high. Prawns were getting a premium price from offshore markets like Japan and Europe, and the fishermen weren't being too particular about quotas. They were fishing the prawns, and a host of other species, as fast as they could bring them in.

I don't know what this has done to animals that lived in the gulf and depended on the prawns and other fish too. For instance, I also remember going swimming at the beach with wild dolphins in the early 1990s. But I can guess that when their food sources get reduced, it must get tough.

Any food source can only be sustainable as long as it is able to renew itself at least as fast as we are consuming it. Probably faster, when it has been seriously depleted - I don't know the details of all this ecological stuff.

But what I do know is that sure as eggs are eggs, Thailand and Indonesia and China will soon run out of prawns too.

What does this mean to prawn-lovers?

A lot of cultures argue that they have always fished, and have the right to continue to do so. My mother argues that she has always eaten prawns - why should she stop now, or even reduce a little?

My parents also don't hold with "all this wacked-out vegetarian stuff". Why should they go vegetarian, or even reduce the amount or types of food they eat? Nature is red in tooth and claw, after all. And my parents are in the majority.

Then there are the Weston A Price extremists, who believe the more meat the better. Lots of it, wild if possible, and bugger the ecosystem. Wild salmon? Gimme gimme! Range-run beef? Yes please! Whale? Why not? Bluefin tuna? Yummy yummy! Dodo? If they could get it, they'd eat it. They don't seem able to make the connection between the food on their table and the ecosystem that supports that food.

Changing our habits in difficult times

By now you're probably figuring out which side of the fence I'm sitting on.

However, I'm not the rampant Save The Snails! lunatic you might be thinking I am.

But I do think that, as a species, we need to reconsider our eating habits. If only to stop eating some foods for a generation or two until balance is restored.

Take a look through Monterey Bay Aquarium's excellent Seafood Watch facility. You don't have to look too hard before, if you're any sort of conservationist, you're worried about all the types of seafood that it is recommended, in red letters, that humans AVOID.

Which makes you wonder, if you do a bit of extrapolation, how many types of seafood that are not on the AVOID list will be so soon, if we all shift from the AVOIDs to the "ok" list?

I've stopped eating fish because I want my great-grandchildren to be able to eat them if they choose.

If that sounds odd, then maybe we'll have to accept that I'm an oddity. But I think it makes sense. Because if we all continue to eat seafood at the rate we are currently, there won't be anything left at all in our oceans. Except plastic.

Making a heartfelt plea for prawns doesn't sound very grandiose. Let's face it: they're not as awe-inspiring as this:



But without the small creatures, we won't have any whales. We won't be able to look into the blue sea, and know it is full of life. We won't have anything. Sure we'll have the memory of a few tasty shrimp cocktails, but is that worth selling our birthright for?

I don't think so.






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The Age Of Stupid

I went and saw The Age Of Stupid this afternoon.

Go see it.

The Age of Stupid Trailer Feb 2009 - SD from Age of Stupid on Vimeo.

Without voicing too many spoilers, I was left with a huge impression of humanity willing to throw our world away for short term profit. Again and again we were provided with examples of individuals who claimed to care about our world, yet who were actively contributing in huge ways to global heating.

Two of the largest impact issues presented were air flights and traffic, and the general refusal to move to renewable energy for our power.

Individual families were making small changes, but the overall movement was clear - the major direction worldwide is towards greater emissions, and more global heating.

Another issue of interest to me was that of right livelihood. One man who was profiled saw no problem with his having worked for an oil company all his life, being flown to an off-shore oil rig daily for his work, and yet claiming to be environmentally-aware.

There wasn't much in the movie that I didn't already know about. Glacier reduction, the increased environmental impact of India and China, record heat waves, flooding and storms. You've seen it all before too.

But it really made me think about my own life. The Archivist in the film (Pete Postlethwaite) said one thing that hit home to me.

He said that, until now, each generation has had a pact that they will leave the world a better place than the generations before it. And each generation - until ours - has tried to do that.

I like to think that I'm doing my best to leave this world a better place for my children. It is hard, because the whole of society seems geared towards destroying the planet as fast as possible for the massive profits of few at the expense of many.

Looking at my own life, I hope that the sum of my acts will be in the positive. But it is only when we all of us act together that we can truly move mountains, and reclaim the beauty and sanctity of this world.

Finally, The Age Of Stupid pleads with us to take action. There is a website - Not Stupid.org, and it asks us to get active. I know I will.

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Dangerous plastics - Tupperware, baby bottles and other household items

There are two main plastic types you want to avoid, and I'm going to make it easy for you to understand why they should be avoided, and how to identify the potentially dangerous types.

The plastic types you want to avoid are Numbered 3 and 7 on their Plastic Identification Codes.

Plastic Type 3 - PVC

Plastic Type 3 is often dangerous.

It's known widely as PVC, and common uses include clothing (e.g. shoes, handbags, raincoats, fake leather and rubber items), soft and flexible plastic toys, and packaging.

Phthalate plasticizers can be added to make the PVC flexible and soft.

These plasticizers are known endocrine disruptors, changing hormone levels and causing birth defects in animal tests. Endocrine disruptors also trigger fat cell activity (cause obesity), and may be linked to risk of diabetes.

Imprecise labelling: The problem is, when you see the "3" recycling symbol - which is the easiest way to identify PVC - you don't know whether phthalates have been added or not. Some PVC has had phthalates added, some hasn't.

You could argue that some may even be "safe". But because you can't tell, the logical thing to do is to consider all Number 3 plastic as unsafe, and avoid it.

As an aside, PVC has been historically difficult to recycle. Most PVC is not recycled. My council, for example, only recycles plastic types 1 and 2, and this is fairly common.

Plastic Type 7 - Other, but includes Polycarbonate (with Bisphenol-A)

Imprecise labelling: Plastic Type 7 includes a whole swag of plastic types including acrylic, fibreglass and nylon as well as polycarbonate (the problem plastic).

One of the most common types of Plastic 7 is polycarbonate. And the most common type of polycarbonate is made from Bisphenol-A (BPA).

You may have heard of Bisphenol-A, and the unsafe baby bottles. This issue has been in the media a fair bit recently.

Many common big-selling baby bottles are made of polycarbonate - Avent is just one of the big sellers that still sells baby bottles made from polycarbonate made from bisphenol-A.

Bisphenol-A (BPA) has been suspected of being harmful to humans since the 1930s (nearly 80 years!), yet we're still making baby bottles that leach this compound into baby milk.

Bisphenol-A is an endocrine disruptor. What this means to you is that it mimics human hormones, is a likely carcinogen (causes cancer), triggers fat cell activity (causes obesity), and exposure may increase rates of birth defects and infant mortality, among a host of other nasties.

In short, you don't really want to expose yourself to this compound any more than necessary.

Well-known products made of polycarbonate include the Tupperware Rock N Serve series (the bowls, not the lids).

A full list of the types of plastics used in Tupperware products in available here.

Note that most Tupperware products do not use polycarbonate, but some do, and as a safety measure you may choose to avoid these polycarbonate items.

Tupperware has a statement on their bisphenol-A containing polycarbonate products here.

Avent (among other brands) continue to sell polycarbonate baby bottles made from BPA, although they have introduced a new bottle. The new bottle is still made from polycarbonate but has a polyethylene liner. You can read Avent's statement on their bottles here, and an interesting article (dated 2002) about Avent's earlier opinions on the matter, which provides interesting links to a number of studies done that indicate the dangers of BPA here.

On April 18, 2008, Health Canada announced that Bisphenol-A is "toxic to human health".

My family's response to this issue

PVC/Plastic Number 3: My family owned various PVC items, including handbags and shoes (me), clothing (all of us), toys (the children) and other household products.

Since becoming aware of the issues surrounding PVC, we have decided to recycle where possible, and bin the rest. We're not taking any chances. Items that need replacing will be replaced with non-plastic versions were possible, and safer plastic versions where only plastic items exist.

Polycarbonate/Plastic Number 7: My children both used Avent polycarbonate bottles. My husband and I also a variety of polycarbonate products in the house, including re-usable water bottles, Tupperware (Rock N Serve) and other items. At the time I thought all these items were safe - now I'm sure they're not.

So we have got rid of all our polycarbonate items, and any items that appear suspect.

An AVENT baby bottle, old re-usable drink bottles and a Tupperware Rock N Serve. All polycarbonate made from Bisphenol-A, all unsafe in our opinion, and all going out the door!

In some instances where no number was marked on the item but the plastic looked like it might be polycarbonate (e.g. kids character drinking cups), we have binned the items. My son (aged 4) is old enough to drink from glass now, and my daughter will drink from Tupperware lidded cups, made from Plastics 4&5, currently recognised as safe.

Future purchases: I intend to stop buying plastic as much as possible generally, and will not buy plastic Numbered 3 & 7 at all. When gifts made from these plastics are given to us, we will return them, with as kind an explanation as possible.

We don't live in a bubble. I'm not Beth Terry, from Fake Plastic Fish, as much as I wish I could be. I have two preschoolers, and the world of preschool is unfortunately also the world of plastic. I can't eliminate all plastic from my life just yet.

But I can draw the line somewhere. Just by being more selective about what I buy, I can reduce my family's exposure to these these dangerous plastics, and make their world - and ours - a little safer.

Links in this post:

• Plastic Identification Codes
  
• PVC - further information
  
• Phthalate plasticizers = further information
  
• Endocrine disruptors - further information
  
• Vinyloop - PVC recycling information
  
• Polycarbonates - further information
  
• Bisphenol-A (BPA) - further information
  
• Tupperware plastic types - full listing
  
• Tupperware company statement - Bisphenol-A (BPA)
  
• Avent company statement on polycarbonate baby bottles and Bisphenol-A (BPA)
  
• Mindfully.org - Leading baby bottle manufacturer says Bisphenol-A not a danger
  
• Beth Terry at Fake Plastic Fish.
  

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Renter mentality

I'm writing about an issue I could do with your opinion on. If you can comment with what you think I should do, I'd appreciate it.

We're still renting, and have been doing so for nearly six months. And now, in the gardening shops and nurseries, I'm really starting to get strong desires to plant trees and build a proper vegetable plot.

I'm growing a few veggies on the deck in pots (lettuce, silverbeet, turnips, tomatoes, cucumbers, broccoli, various herbs), but my 2 year old keeps overturning them, and dumping the soil on the deck. It just isn't working! No plant can cope with that!

Here's the problem: Our landlady says she has "no objection to us having a veggie plot, in theory. As long as when we leave, we remove it and put everything back as it was."

What does "back as it was" mean? Grass, and nothing but. A pretty useless backyard, if you ask me.

Our rental backyard - nothing but grass and a few toys. Typical of many rentals, our landlady has said we can have a veggie plot, as long as we "put it back as it was before" when we leave. Depressing thought.

Fast-forward twenty years, and if the house is still a rental, as is likely, and tenants are still following the landlady's directions, as is likely, there will still be grass. Nothing but grass.

But if I plant some fruit trees and get a veggie plot going, fast forward twenty years and whoever lives here will be enjoying lovely home-grown fruit and vegetables. I know which garden I'd prefer!

The problem of renting - a "don't care" attitude for the earth and her people

I find the whole "grass only" dictum hard to deal with.

You see, we live in Dunedin, which is a University city, and has a large percentage of rental homes, many of which are rented to students who are struggling financially.

And if landlords and landladies around the city are, like mine, not wanting their tenants to make their rentals more sustainable, then we're all of us locked into a vicious circle of having little more than a patch of grass to mow.

Grass - when we could be harvesting fresh, free, home-grown produce.

So I'm wondering. Should I ignore my landlady's decree that we harvest nothing but grass?

Should I be a "good tenant" and keep on mowing, wasting electricity every time I plug in my mower, and having to pester my husband, who seems keen to do anything he can to avoid doing the mowing?

Or should I rebel, and buy a couple of apple trees, maybe a plum, and some berries, and plant them? Should I be a troublesome tenant, and establish a veggie plot - which, according to the Property Press, the Otago Daily Times, and a host of other sources, will add value to my landlady's property?

I guess, if my landlady really doesn't like what I do, I can dig up my fruit trees and take them with me when I go. And replace the veggie plot with grass seed.

So...what do you think I should do?
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A blessed life

My husband's great-aunt died this week. She was 102.

I was told the news last night, after I got home from rehearsal. I received it with mixed feelings of sadness, and of a strangely fulfilled peace.

When someone dies, in full command of their mind and faculties at the age of 102, who can say it is a tragedy?

This woman was incredibly bright and kind, and lived a rich life in every sense of the meaning. She leaves behind family who will all think nothing of her but good thoughts and memories. An incredible legacy of love, and trust, and respect, and community.

I guess what I am trying to say is that sometimes death is not a bad thing. Sometimes it is simply closure.

Sometimes death is not something to fear or to hate. Sometimes it is simply an event whose time has come.

I loved this woman, but when I look back on her life - the small part of it that were open to me - I will think on it with joyfulness, and pleasure. And with a lot of love. I am honoured to have known her, and to have been even a tiny part of her family and life.

I guess that's all I have to say for now. You might ask what this small epitaph has to do with the theme of Cluttercut, which is "Green Simplicity"?

The answer is nothing. And everything.

Thanks for reading.

Rest in peace, Aunty Becky.
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Bottled water, hyping the planet to a plasticky grave

Blind taste tests repeatedly show tap water tastes just fine.

Yet people are still buying bottled water. Billions of plastic bottles of water.

Each day in the US, more than 60 million plastic water bottles are thrown away. And that's just the US. And that's just water bottles.

Factor in juice bottles, and Coke bottles, and soda water, and Pepsi, and soda-with-a-splash-of-juice, and flavored waters, and Mountain Dew, and sports drinks, and you're looking at a huge environmental disaster.

Raise your hand (I'll stop typing for a second to raise my hand) if you know that out there on your street, right now, if you went outside, there would be a "disposable" plastic bottle sitting in a gutter or on a lawn, where someone has tossed it aside, too lazy to throw it in a rubbish bin.

Or maybe they threw it in the bin, and the wind blew it out.

Either way, it's fouling up our beautiful planet: our beautiful planet. Yours and mine.

The whole plastic-is-recyclable story is just as much garbage as that plastic bottle sitting outside right now. It's rubbish.

Plastic rarely gets recycled, and when it does, it's back into more plastic, which may or may not be disposed of properly. Or it may end up sitting on your lawn. Or in your gutter, outside your house.

Where The Water Challenge fits in

I've started something called The Water Challenge. You can find out all about it by clicking the icon. In short, a group of dedicated bloggers and myself are drinking nothing but tap water for a year.

To give up bottled water wasn't enough for me. I was still a part of the problem, every time I opened a bottle of Coke, or downed a bottle of juice.

More and more, cans are disappearing, to be replaced with plastic, because plastic is cheaper for manufacturers. Despite my not wanting to be part of the problem, I found I was very much a part of the problem.

Tap water is the solution. It's here, right with us, in every home and every building and every workplace. And it's free.

I don't want to be part of the problem. I have two young kids, and when they are grown and ask me what I did to try to make things better, I want to be able to look them in the eye, and say honestly that I did everything I could.

I want to say to them that some things were hard, but I did them anyway, because I love this earth more than I can ever explain, and when I think about the grave danger our world is in, drinking nothing but tap water for a year is such a small thing to do. It really is.

I'm no hero. I'm just an ordinary Jane who loves her kids. But I'm sick to my soul from seeing those plastic bottles everywhere, and I'm afraid in my heart for this wonderful world of ours. I want to act! I decided a long time ago that I won't stand still and purposeless and weak and watch while the world burns.

Some things are worth fighting for, and some challenges are worth taking

The Water Challenge is only a few days old. Already I've found a few bloggers to join me (Yay! Thankyou! Thankyou!). But I'd love it if more people out there, reading this blog, would take a look inside themselves and think, well, maybe this is something I can do too...

If you'd like to join us, and live a life just a little less plastic for a year, let me know. I have faith that I can do it. And if I can do it, I think you can too.

Thanks for reading.

The proof in the pudding. Does tap water taste as good? Watch and see:



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Lentil and Broccoli Stew

This is a real winter warmer.

It's simple to make, cheap and filling - and easy to clean up afterwards, as all the cooking is in one pot. And my family loves it!

This recipe is vegan, and gluten-free. I serve it with plain boiled rice.

Ingredients:

• 250 g / 1 cup brown (french) lentils
  
• 750 mls / 3 cups water.
  
• 2 large onions, diced
  
• 410 g tin tomatoes, or 2-3 ripe tomatoes diced. Or you can add both!
  
• I large head of broccoli, chopped finely into florets
  
• 1 tsp black pepper
  
• 1 tsp basil
  

Method:

• 1. Lightly boil the lentils, the chopped onions, the basil and black pepper in water for about 30 minutes. Stir occasionally, and just keep an eye on things so the saucepan doesn't boil over or dry out.
  
  
  Keep an eye on things, so the lentils don't boil over. Use a big saucepan too!
  
  
• 2. Add the tomatoes, tinned tomatoes and broccoli florets, and mix well.
  
  
  Chop the broccoli and tomatoes. I like to add a tin of tomatoes as well as diced fresh tomatoes, but it's up to you.
  
  
• 3. Cook for an additional 15 minutes until the broccoli is properly cooked.
  

A yummy, one-pot meal. Just right for winter!


This recipe makes enough for a family of 4 when served with rice, plus leftovers for my husband's lunch the next day!
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My Year Without Chocolate is OVER!

It's over. A Year Without Chocolate is done with.

I celebrated this morning with some Fair Trade, Organic chocolate.

It's my favourite: Green & Black's dark chocolate, with orange and spices.

My children and husband helped me break my year-long fast.

Yes. The chocolate tasted wonderful!

The Water Challenge: A year on tap water

My year on tap water (see The Water Challenge) started the moment I took my first bite of chocolate.

My last drink, before it's nothing but tap water, was a glass of Coke. Yes, I said farewell to flavoured drinks with the biggest of the Corporate Nasties!

Then no reprieve, no breaks. Straight from one challenge to the next.

Belinda is taking on this mammoth challenge with me. So I know I'm not alone.

It's not too late if you want to join us, but this will be tough. Even now, I'm wondering if I can do it.

Wish us luck!

Join The Water Challenge: A year on tap water!

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