Happy HalloGreen

Just hangin' with some pumpkins

Really, truly if we are looking to have an eco-friendly Halloween we really need to only be concerned with two things:  Costumes and candy. (Holiday decorations in general will be dealt with in a future post).

The easiest way to go green on a costume is to make it out of clothes and supplies you have around the house, or use a hand-me-down.  Some of the women in our mom's group got great costumes on consignment.  And the little ones are so, well, little that it doesn't take much material to get creative.  The worst choice you could make is to purchase a new costume out of synthetic materials...this is what we did.

Shame on us!  I am very crafty, but the thought of constructing a costume was just too over-whelming this year.  And when we looked online at the adorable, and I mean adorable costumes available for babies I just got caught up in the whole thing.  We bought her a peanut.  Not just the nut, but the whole shell.  But not Mr. Peanut.  She has no top-hat, monocle or cane.  Though I wish...a baby with a monocle would be awesome!

I couldn't even tell you what this peanut is made of.  It's some sort of dense foam layered over some sort of polyester.  I don't know what possessed us.  But I can try to turn it in to a positive by keeping the costume in great condition and giving it to baby after baby to prolong its life.

Luckily Phoebe is at an age where I don't have to be concerned about candy.  But none-the-less I wanted to do a little research and find out what the greenest candy options were.  When I did a random google search the first thing I came across was an article about green things to give out a Halloween.  They were the following:

Pennies

Apples

Books

Pencils

Yikes!  I mean, I love pennies, apples, books and pencils, but it's Halloween!  It's Candy Day!!! And can you imagine how heavy our little plastic pumpkins would get if we went around collecting pennies or books from every household?

Then I found an article on making vegan candy corn.  Aye yi yi.  If I don't have the energy to slap a red onesie on my daughter and draw some black dots on it so she can be a lady bug, I am not shaping minuscule pieces of maize.

Third time is a charm, because I found actual candy!  The following website http://ecofabulous.com/ecoguides/the-ecofab-guide-to-halloween-candy/ 

shows you different options you can order online and hand out including the "ultimate mixed bag of natural candy."  

You can also go to this website: http://www.globalexchangestore.org/Fair-Trade-Trick-or-Treat-Action-Kit-p/gp5400.htm 

and get a Halloween Fair Trade action kit.  Not only does it come with candy, but it is educational.

Great!  These are, of course, way more expensive than Kit Kat bars, so I wanted to find out what the best option would be for run-of-the-mill commercial candies.  This was a real challenge, because none of them are good for the environment in their packaging or production.  But here are a few things to keep in mind if you can't afford the organic stuff:

Anything packaged in cardboard is better than plastic.  You can recycle the cardboard, but those tiny insidious wrappers won't biodegrade.

If you are going with chocolate, Cadbury has just announced they will begin using fair-trade chocolate, and while Hershey's is NOT fairtrade, you can actually recycle Hershey's Kiss wrappers.

Avoid wrapping you little candies in a bigger plastic bag.  I know they are cute as can be, but they just get thrown in the trash.

Use a natural-material bag for candy collecting.

Most of all, walk the neighborhood instead of driving!  This is the most eco-friendly choice you can make on Halloween.

Don't forget to stop by and Toys-R-Us or Babies-R-Us and pick up your free little Unicef box to Trick-or-Treat with.  A donation as small as 7 cents can get a child clean water for a day.

And finally, I found this great website:

www.greenhalloween.org

It is fantastic!  It tells you all sorts of things you can do from solar halloween lights to a national costume swap.  In fact, this whole blog entry could have just been, "Go to www.greenhalloween.org."

So check it out!  And (said in spooky Vincent Price voice) Happy Halloweeeeeeeeen!

totally depressing environmental fact:

200,00 children in West Africa work under forced labor on cocoa farms

totally exciting environmental tip:

If you own a cat (black or otherwise!), get some of these more earth-friendly litters:

- Silica gel pearls (made from sand, no dust)
- Recycled newspaper that's been compressed into pellets
- Ground corn cobs
- Extruded straw pellets
- Pine sawdust from lumber waste
- Kenaf plant pellets (a fast growing hibiscus)
- Other products made from cellulose fiber

Used cat litter can also be used in your garden as a mulch or fertilizer

So Sorry...

Phoebe bawling her eyes out because I sat her
down on a hill and she fell on her face...
and even worse I took a picture of it

Oh brother I am behind on this blog.  Which is great, because I was really looking for something else to feel guilty about.  What is it about being a new mother that has us feeling guilty about something ALL THE TIME?  Well let me take this moment to tell you this, and print it out and post it on your fridge; if you are loving, protecting and nurturing your child you have NOTHING to feel guilty about EVER!
There.  Now let's move on to all the things that make us feel guilty.

I can't tell you how many conversations I have had with my fellow parents that start with, "I feel so terrible, I..."  Most recently a friend shared with me her struggles with breastfeeding.  Although she went to amazing lengths to keep nursing her baby, but for medical reasons she had to switch to formula.  She truly had no choice but still manages to be wracked with guilt.  I feel guilty when I turn the television on around my daughter.  For the most part she ignores it, but there are those mornings when she wakes at 6 AM and all I want is a little "Today Show" to keep me from falling asleep at the high chair.  Somehow even though I have woken up with her, nursed her, changed her, snuggled her, played with her and given her home-made organic food, at the end of the day all I can think is how the background TV noises and images must be rotting her brain.  How could I do that to my child?

And then there are the actual times we inadvertently put our child in danger.  Like when I was cutting grapes for Phoebe and absent-mindedly handed her the grapes the the hand also yielding the sharp knife. Or the time I reached down to pick her up in her car seat and my heavy purse slipped off my shoulder and landed squarely on her face.  Or the time on vacation when I strapped her in to her car seat, only to realize as we arrived at our next destination that I never secure the actual car seat to the car.  I was heavy with guilt for days after that one.

Every so often I like to ask myself, "What would the world be like if everyone lived like I do?"  I think this is a good barometer for your daily life.  If everyone was like me there would be no plastic bags, an over-population of farm animals, and when a new line opened up in the grocery store every would say, "You were already ahead of me, you go first!"  People would always use turn signals and compact car spaces would be taken up by only compact cars.  We all might have type 2 diabetes from our sugar consumption and we would have higher-than-normal water bills because of our luxuriously long showers and incessant hand-washing.  But if we encountered a piece of trash on our neighborhood walk we would pick it up and the earth would be spotless!  And most importantly all of our children would be nurtured and loved.

The number one thing the Dali Lami will tell you to meditate on is compassion.  But some how we don't include ourselves in our compassionate mindset.  We are loving to our families, our children and the environment, but hard on ourselves.  I recently read an article where a woman asked each member of her family, "How can I love you better?"  What if you asked yourself the same question...

totally depressing environmental fact:
20% of preschoolers and 50% of all children are obese due to unhealthy food choices and sedentary lifestyles

NEW!  In addition to our totally depressing environmental fact, I will include an Uplifting Little Tip on how you can do something positive!

uplifting little tip:
if you can't afford a water-saving toilet, just put a brick in the water tank to lessen consumption.

The Sound and The Fury

I would be lying if I said I didn't have a moment where I leaped over the coffee table (replay it in your mind in slo-mo) to stop my mom from opening a SunChips bag because I knew the sound could wake the baby from her nap.  Unfortunately it seems too many people have had this experience, and SunChips announced it is discontinuing it's compostable bag.  This is such depressing news!  And while part of me gets it (there was a whole facebook page dedicated to how noisy it was!) the other part finds it infuriating.  We really can't live with a noisy bag to lessen pollution?

Back when Phoebe was only a few weeks old I was desperate for sleep.  I was reading everything I could on getting a baby to sleep longer or more often.  At the time I was averaging four to five hours a night and would spend my waking hours wondering if someone could actually die from lack of sleep.  I came across something, somewhere, and once I read it I had a complete paradigm shift.  It basically boiled down to:  What makes you think you deserve eight hours of sleep?

Hold on.  But...I do!  I'm...so sleepy....(tears, tears and more tears)...(dry the tears)...(think about it)...

That statement truly changed me.  We, and by "We" maybe I mean "People living in 2010" or maybe I mean "Americans" believe we have the right to certain things.  Like I have the right for my Internet connection to be fast or I have the right to not have my Trader Joe's stop selling that one product I love.  But the truth is these are all conveniences.  And once we get out of the mind set that we deserve our lives to as easy as possible, the easier it becomes to deal with life's annoyances.

[Side note: I was watching the movie "Summer Place" on Friday.  It was made in the 50's and a woman in the film keeps referring to her toilet as "my convenience."  I love it!!]

While shopping at one of my favorite stores, Green and Greener (http://store.green-and-greener.com/servlet/StoreFront), the owner told me about Fresh Kills Landfill.  I had never heard of it.  But apparently it is the largest man made structure that can be seen from outer space.  So I guess we have to make a choice; either keep filling the landfills, or wake your sleeping baby because you needed a salty snack.

totally depressing environmental fact:

Opened as a "temporary landfill" in 1947, The Fresh Kills Landfill covers 2200 acres, can be seen with the naked eye from space and is taller then the Statue of Liberty, at a height of 225 ft. It is situated on the western shore of Staten Island and is made up of four sections which contain fifty plus years of landfill, mostly in the form of household waste. The waste disposed at the Fresh Kills Landfill and the decomposition products of this waste contain numerous chemicals. The chemicals can enter into the environment in a variety of ways: releases into the air from barge unloading and garbage trucks unloading; the cement crushing trucks releases chemical dust into the air; and into the local groundwater by leaching.

Poor Baby

Commercials are powerful.  They can convince you you need things you already have, or want things you never knew you wanted, or even think in a new way.  I was pulled in tonight by a commercial.  "Real life" people were talking about how their cars did these amazing things: The car woke them up when they were falling asleep behind the wheel, or slammed on the breaks before the driver even had a chance to react.  "I need this car!"  I thought.  "I need to keep my child safe in this car!"  So, let's just wait till the end of the commercial to see what it is so I can get it ...okay... still waiting...long commercial... I think this is John Hamm doing the voice over....oh....okay.  It's a Mercedes.

For those of you who know me, you know there is no way I can afford a Mercedes.  And that is fine with me.  I could care less what kind of car I drive.  I chose my car for the gas mileage and airbags, not because I thought people would envy me cruising past them on the highway in my sweet Scion XA.  But this commercial wasn't about status symbols, it was about safety.  And there is nothing that will make you feel worse about your parenting than thinking you can't afford to keep your child safe.  It occurred to me yesterday when I was speaking to some other mothers about convertible car seats.  These range in price with the safest being the most expensive.  So, if you can't afford the safest one, does that mean you don't care about the safety of your child?
What a terrible decision for a parent to have to make.

So I wanted to share with you an essay I wrote for Momversations while I was pregnant.  It has nothing to do with being green, but if you are in a similar financial situation you may be able to relate...

POOR BABY!

SERIOUSLY, MY BABY HAS NO MONEY

by Rebecca Sage Allen

I was never that girl that dreamt about having babies.  I never needed to hold anyone’s baby or peek in a baby carriage or thought that all babies were cute.  Once in a while I would meet a baby that really got to me, and I would think it was special, simply because I didn’t have the urge to ignore it.  I love my friend’s and family’s babies, and knew I would love my own if and when I decided to have one.  But just because I didn’t lie in bed dreaming of nurseries and mommy–and-me groups, didn’t mean I didn’t picture what it would be like to be a mom.  You just assume that if and when you have children their childhood will be similar to your own.  They grow up in a house, they play in a yard, they are not spoiled but they want for nothing.  There is no debate over, “can we afford to get this ice cream?” or “”are you sure you can’t squeeze into that jumper one more year?”  Life takes care of itself because you are financially comfortable.  In the picture…but in reality…

You are five-months pregnant and you are not in a house, you are in a two-bedroom apartment, setting up your babies room/guest room/home office and hoping that the neighbor somehow decides to quit smoking between now and the wee one’s arrival so that smoke doesn’t keep billowing in from their windows directly into your babies’ crib area.  You have asked your upstairs neighbor a half a dozen times to please stop manically spitting off his balcony as it travels past your windows and you are tired of thinking, “Is it raining?  Oh, no, that’s the neighbor’s phlegm.”  You stare out your living room window at the building next door, a Department of Water and Power “station” and wonder what goes on there with all the “Danger: High Voltage” signs and hope that none of this is silently giving you and your unborn child some terrible disease.  And that yard that you grew up frolicking in has been reduced to a 3x5 balcony, big enough for a few plants and two tiny folding chairs.  This is not the motherhood you imagined.  You thought you would be like the Cosby’s, but it turns out you’re Roseanne.

My parents were wonderful.  And their greatest service to me might have also been their greatest disservice.  They always encouraged me to follow my dreams.  They paid for my degree in musical theater, supported my move to Chicago, a city I had never once visited in my life, to pursue improv and sketch comedy, and were 100% behind me when my husband and I decided to take the leap and move to LA.  And although we have been extremely successful by our own standards, that success never came with a big paycheck.  We are frugal; we have savings and no debt.  But we never know where the next paycheck is coming from, or how much it will be, or how long it will be for the next one to follow.  All this was perfectly acceptable to us, the couple, until we found out about this bun in my oven.  Now along with all the other pressures that cram a pregnant woman’s brain I am feeling the most force from the mighty dollar.  Will this kid be able to go to a good pre-school?  Will she be fluent in sign language and French by kindergarten?  Will our Christmas cards have a montage of black-and-white photos of her at a beach, and a raspberry farm, and a pumpkin patch?  And how will I be able to deal with other mothers who have the money I don’t have?  Like last year, before I was pregnant, when my old boss said to me, “I’m taking the family to France next week.  Can you believe Jayna has never been to Paris?”  

Jayna was seven.

Lately I’ve been saying to my husband, “You know, we’re rich.”  If I close my eyes to all the material things around me I honestly believe this is true.  I have a fantastic, healthy family.  My husband is the greatest gift on the face of the planet.  My in-laws are magnificent.  We live in a free country, in a warm city a car ride from the ocean, in a safe, all-be-it small, apartment.  And our tiny baby girl is growing just fine inside my thrift-store-maternity-shirt-covered belly.  Regardless of what we earn we will make her feel like the richest girl on Earth, even if she hasn’t seen the City of Lights by the time she’s entering first-grade. 

Now, I am off to my prenatal yoga class!  And by prenatal yoga class I mean doing some general stretching on my living room floor.  Those classes are $17 a pop!  Don’t get me started on that…

I'm Leaving on a Jet Plane

I heard a song this morning that took me back to a specific time in my life.  In fact, to a very specific moment. I was in my twenties (ugh, just by writing "in my twenties" solidifies the fact that I am, indeed, no longer in them) and traveling alone from London to Amsterdam.  I had taken a night-time ferry to a train that had me arrive in Amsterdam at 4:00 AM.  I was nursing a broken heart at the time, thinking that the man I was in love with was in love with someone else, and found this journey to be just the perfect amount of dramatic for me.  And now, in my thirties, as I look back at that moment, instead of thinking what a wonderful adventure it was, all I can think is, "I would never, EVER let my daughter travel alone to Amsterdam in the middle of the night!"

So, let's talk about Earth-friendly traveling, shall we?

I've said it before that convenience is the enemy of eco-consciousness.  But so is stress.  When preparing for our August trip to Michigan, thinking about the two flights there, the two flights back, the car trips in between, etc.  I thought my brain might implode by adding cloth diapers into that equation.  Plus, the last time we flew with Phoebe she was four-months-old and 100% breast-feeding, so everything was easy peasy.  How does one bring home made, organic baby food on vacation?  And toys?  And books?  Aye-yi-yi!  Well, here is how.

First of all, if you don't have an awesome mother-in-law and sister-in-law, go out and grab some.  I know I am ruining every modern cliche but I absolutely love my in-laws.  They did everything they could to make this trip as easy as possible on us.  Regardless of how you feel about the people you are visiting, lean on them to help you get thru this.  If they can provide pack-n-plays, strollers, etc, let them.  If they don't have any baby accoutrement or you are vacationing alone, there are plenty of websites that rent baby equipment so you don't have to bring your or buy it new.  Just put in the the town you are visiting and baby rental into a google search and it should pop up!

If you are feeding your baby homemade food this is a bit tough.  My Mother-in-law bought us a little food blender intended to make one-serving smoothies and it worked perfectly!  The first day of our trip we went grocery shopping, bought a bunch of organic veggies, steamed them, blended them and stored them.  I have this little contraption called "Zoli" that I love.  It is little food or formula bowls that all screw together that you can serve from.  I'll put a link below.  We brought our own multi-grain baby cereal since it is super light and travels well.  Along with a few spoons and a few empty bottles we were all set!

If you are a cloth diaper family I cannot say enough good things about the diposable gDiapers for travel. You can flush the inserts or just throw them away.  I hate to say it, but I think cloth diapers on the road are nearly impossible.  Or just, truly the greatest, stinkiest pain.  If you go the gDiaper route, bring lots of back up covers and liners.

Our trip happened to take us to a fairly remote part of the country.  The one grocery store (actually called "The Mercentile") didn't have much of a selection.  So we brought a few jars of organic store-bought baby food to get us thru.  Also, half way thru the trip we ran out of  gDiapers.  I had to buy...I can't believe I am even writing this...huggies.  It truly broke my heart.  So if you happen to be on an adventure far from civilization and don't feel like  bringing the entire nursery with you, consider having a box shipped with your supplies.  Either do it yourself or order straight off of Diapers.com, Amazon or whatever your favorite baby website is.  With baggage fees being what they are you probably won't spend any additional money on the shipping.  Can we take a moment to discuss the scam of baggage fees?  The price of gas has gone down airlines, stop making us pay because you are running your business into the ground.

And, speaking of taking advantage of the customer.  Do you know when you have a baby you can bring bottled water with you on a flight?  I claimed it was for "formula" even though I was breastfeeding.  It was somewhat hilarious though, as the security guy pulled my two giant Smart Waters from my bag and asked, "How long IS your flight?"  He actually confiscated one because he thought my water usage was "excessive."  We're really out there fighting terrorism people.

Whatever choices you make to ease the burden of travel, just think twice before you make "excuses."  With a little planning you don't have to be any more destructive to the planet than you are on a daily basis.

Oh, so you want to know what song I was listening to, sailing across the English Channel, heart shattered in pieces?  Not a chance!  I'm in my thirties now, I don't have let myself be embarrassed.

LINKS:
http://www.zo-li.com/

totally depressing environmental fact:
airports are known to be major sources of noise, water, and air pollution. They pump carbon dioxide (CO ₂ ), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and nitrogen oxides (NO _x ) into the atmosphere, as well as dump toxic chemicals--used to de-ice airplanes during winter storms--into waterways


AWESOME!  One more reason to have a fear of flying!


POST SCRIPT
As I write this, my husband's New Yorker calendar is open to a cartoon of a man sipping a martini on an airplane.  The caption reads:
"It's not enough that I fly first class...My friends must also fly coach."

Just A Quick Note...

I can't stop thinking about plastics #4...until I started doing this blog and the research behind it I had no idea that you could only recycle #4's at the bins outside of grocery stores.  I just assumed, living in the second largest city in the U.S, that if something had a recycle symbol on it, I could put it in my bin.  So make sure you are looking for #4's (mostly plastic bags and plastic wrappers), keeping them all together and taking them to the grocery store.  I also did a little research on ziplock bags.  It's hard to get a solid answer, but it looks as if these too can be dropped with your plastic grocery bags as long as you cut out the zipper.  I will try to get some more concrete information.

And just something to think about... it is estimated that plastics take roughly 1000 years to break down in a landfill, but just 10-20 years when exposed to air and sunlight.  It's clear we need to rethink how we dispose of the trash we have disposed of.  You know, when you throw it away and the truck comes and makes it "magically disappear."

totally depressing environmental fact:
plastic is petroleum based, and it’s estimated we use 1.6 million barrels of oil every year, just making plastic bottled water.

I Said Something

Ugh.  So I confronted someone who littered, and I quickly learned why I never do it.

Last weekend my mother, daughter and I were coming out of a CostCo.  The sidewalk was a traffic jam of empty carts (not to get off topic, but come on everybody!  If you can haul a 48-pack of Sunchips into your house, you can push a cart ten feet to the cart corral).  So as my mom pushed Phoebe and the groceries around to the car I walked down the sidewalk, where ahead of me, a woman was putting her two daughters in a cart.  She then grabbed a bunch of plastic spoons, napkins and paper cups from those infamous CostCo free samples and threw them on to the ground.  I couldn’t believe it!  She just …threw them!  On the ground!  I was so furious.  And so, inspired by my last blog post, I said something.  I walked up to the cart, began picking up all of her litter, and said something to the effect of, “It looks like someone threw this trash all over the ground, so I’m just going to pick it up, because I hate litter.”  She was obviously caught WAY off guard.  She fumbled for a minute and said it wasn’t her who did it.  I said something about how it is disrespectful to ruin someone’s neighborhood, and then…it was ON!  She lost it!  She started screaming at me about how she hates litter too, but I don’t know what it’s like to have kids, they put everything in their mouth, (excuse, excuse, excuse!).  I got all fired up and told her that I am a mom as well, and I would never teach my children that littering is okay.  “And that is exactly what you are doing,…teaching them that it is okay.”  Meanwhile, her poor little girls are just staring at me like, “what... is... HAPPENING!”   The fight kept going and going!  At one point I just leaned against the wall and let her yell at me.  It was ugly.

So here’s the lesson.  I felt terrible the whole rest of the day.  Not because I said something to her, but because I fought with her.  I hate confrontation, and I am really not the kind of person who likes to be mean.  But I was crazy to think that we wouldn’t end up fighting.  What did I think, that she was going to say? “You know what?  You’re right!  I shouldn’t litter.  Thank you for teaching me such an important life lesson.  Who knew I would grow so much, here, in the middle of a CostCo parking lot!!  Do take care!”  I should have just picked the litter up, maybe made some eye contact, and walked away.  Or even gone the extra mile and say, “I know how crazy it can get with kids, so I’ll throw this away for you.”  Even if I’m thinking, “What’s wrong with you, you selfish idiot?!”

All in all it felt good to say something  I would have festered just as much that night if I didn’t say something.  And like my cousin said, “She’s touching the gross trash anyway, she couldn’t walk the few feet to the trash cans at the front of the store?”  I know I was right, I just went about it wrong.  What’s that great quote?

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to say nothing.”

My new favorite piece of litter.  Found on a hike in Griffith Park.

Total depressing environmental fact:

Cigarette butts are one of the most commonly littered items in the world.  According to a

survey conducted by the County of Los Angeles Department of Public Works, County residents drop a

cigarette butt on the ground almost 600,000 times per month.  That’s more than seven million cigarette

butts per year."