Playing cards had not yet entered my mind.

So imagine my amused surprise the other day when, while shopping for a new deck of quality cards for bridge (my husband had even requested a plastic set), I stumbled across Bicycle’s new (launched in 2008) line of Eco Edition Playing Cards.

While there is almost certainly a good level of bandwagon-jumping greenwashing going on here, there is still much good to say about these cards.  According to Bicycle:

Our playing cards are crafted from sustainable forest paper, starch-based laminating glue and vegetable-based printing inks.  This pack of cards is recyclable.

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Their “water-based epoxy liner”, long rumoured (but never confirmed) to contain BPA, indeed had BPA all along.

SIGG kept this cozy little secret by constantly releasing reassuring statements that their proprietary formula had been extensively tested and was never found to leach BPA.

The subtle truth hidden in their messages was that they never said there was no BPA in there to begin with.  But now, one entire year after changing their liner to a new “EcoCare”, BPA-free formula, they are now admitting what so many have suspected all along.

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Moby Wraps, one of the most popular stretchy wraps for babywearing, is currently selling a custom-designed model sporting a “Born Free” butterfly logo, from the makers of The Business of Being Born (that’s Ricki Lake in the promo photo, along with the film’s director Abby Epstein).

A portion of the proceeds from sales of this wrap will go to support the Coalition for Improving Maternity Services, an organization now in its second decade.  CIMS seeks to promote evidence-based maternity care, and states their mission as follows:

The Coalition for Improving Maternity Services (CIMS) is a coalition of individuals and national organizations with concern for the care and wellbeing of mothers, babies, and families.  Our mission is to promote a wellness model of maternity care that will improve birth outcomes and substantially reduce costs. This evidence-based mother-, baby-, and family-friendly model focuses on prevention and wellness as the alternatives to high-cost screening, diagnosis, and treatment programs.

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You might be pleasantly surprised.  From small-business WAHM handmade slings, to big-name brands, there is a wide selection of organic baby carriers out there to choose from.  Whatever style of carrier you prefer, organic options in natural colour-grown fabrics and vivid naturally-dyed colours abound.

Here is just a partial list, to help get your search started.

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The health benefits of honey are many and well-known.  From skin cleanser to antibiotic, cough suppressant, allergy relief to just plain old sweetener, honey can do it all.  But can it help you sleep?  Some studies are suggesting that it can.

I have to credit my sister-in-law for this one.  She’s a recent convert to “all things natural” and is sharing her new discoveries with evangelical enthusiasm.  The latest is the apparent evidence that having a spoonful of honey at bedtime helps you get to sleep, and stay asleep.  She swears that she has noticed an enormous difference in her own sleep since trying this.

I’ve struggled with insomnia my whole life.  My son seems to be heading down the same route.  As he has SPD (Sensory Processing Dysfunction) and possibly ADHD, his sleep is vitally important yet he cannot settle down to rest.  We’ve had to resort to him taking melatonin most nights for the past couple years, though we’ve recently been working to find other means to help him relax and get to sleep.

Will a simple dose of honey solve our sleep problems?  We’re going to find out. And I’ll keep you posted right here on Eco Child’s Play.  Stay tuned!

Photo credit:  alsjhc via Creative Commons

For one day — August 8, 2009 — children around the world are invited to perform simple, yet important, little acts of kindness.  Their goal this year is to have one million children participate in the Great Kindness Challenge.

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But it’s not about the decor — it’s what they carry that makes this place special.  Plan Toys.  HaPe.  Schylling.  Plastic toys made from recycled milk jugs.  Non-toxic wooden toys.  Toys intended to enrich the mind and body of your children, not just feed into consumerism and branding.

And for me, it is a local store, within driving distance, right here in Atlantic Canada.  Unfortunately for my American friends reading this, while they do take online orders, Hot Toads only delivers within Canada.  Sorry, eh?

One of the many cool items they have is a line of large toy cars called E-Racers, from HaPe’s Bamboo Collection.  I had a nice chat with the fellow working there, and learned that apparently these were the first toys to be made from bamboo.  I was surprised that, while bamboo has been used for clothes, cutlery and dinnerware, flooring and even wallpaper for some time, the idea of bamboo toys was still relatively new.

He also filled me in on a fact I had previously been unaware of.  Of course, bamboo is the new golden child of the eco movement: it grows easily and quickly without pesticides, and is therefore a readily renewable resource with low environmental impact.  Bamboo wood is attractive and sturdy, and bamboo cloth is soft and has natural antibacterial properties.  As worldwide consumer demand for bamboo has increased dramatically in recent years, some companies have taken to clear-cutting hardwood forests in order to make room for bamboo plantations.  And despite bamboo’s rapid growth, difficulty in seed propagation combined with over-harvesting has even threatened some species to near-extinction.

Ugh.

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In a sudden reversal, Transport Canada announced on Tuesday that it would release the results of hundreds of tests on child car seats conducted since 2003.

Prior to Tuesday, they were refusing to publicly release the six years’ worth of tests — paid for with the public dollar — because “there may be a potential for unfair material damage to the private sector without cause.”

On Monday, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported on this issue.  They learned that these tests were similar to ones carried out by the NHTSA in 2008, which revealed problems with some seats, such as failures in side impact crashes and numerous cases of infant seats detaching from their bases. These results led to recalls and changes in car seat safety policies.

As you might expect, this news prompted considerable backlash.

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With ongoing news of moms having problems breastfeeding in public, confusion over breastfeeding-friendly symbols, toxins being passed through breastmilk, miscalculation of growth patterns, and anti-lactivism “mommy wars”, I think we could use a laugh about our boobs right about now.

Among the many “patented features” of Tru-Breast are:

• LUL-A-BYE Sound Unit, Baby hears same soothing heartbeat he or she has grown accustomed to. While nursing, baby is lulled to sleep.
• KWICK-KLEEN Nipple. No need to boil this nipple. Made of guaranteed lifetime materials and it can’t be accidentally pulled off!
• ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY: No wasteful packaging to discard.

And don’t forget that Tru-Breasts are completely free: “…unlike formulas and bottles, which can cost thousands of dollars per baby, a set of TRU-BREAST ^TM units are included in the price of your pregnancy.”

To read the complete ad in all its glory, head over to ProMoM.  Oh, and while you’re there, check out 101 Reasons to Breastfeed Your Child as well as their large collection of articles and essays on breastfeeding.

We strive to be eco-conscious in all things, to live in harmony with nature and each other. We endeavour to nourish our bodies with whole foods, locally grown, rich in the nutrients nature gave them, clear of artificial processing and toxic additives. We aim to nourish our children with strong family bonds, freedom, integrity and perceptive discretion, away from the influence of rampant consumerism, peer-orientation and pressure, the wastefulness and shallowness of contemporary western society.

We don’t always quite live up to these ideals.

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What makes Hankettes so great?  There isn’t a single aspect of “green” production that they’ve missed. All their products are hand-sewn.  The cloth is all organically-grown cotton.  Coloured fabrics are either colour-grown or hand-dyed with fiber reactive dyes.  Production is all local, along the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia, Canada.  It’s still at heart a small family business.  Their practices are transparent.  Their website links to “green” information, resources, and even competitors.  And the family itself is a homesteading, homeschooling, compost toileting role model, that truly walks the walk.  They are proof positive that sustainable and ethical business practices can be successful.

Our business truly reflects our lives and enhances the lives of our environmentally conscious customers around the world who purchase our natural based products.

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Energy drinks such as Red Bull, Rockstar, and Monster — laced with high doses of caffeine (up to seven times the amount in a cup of strong coffee, or 14 cans of cola) and other stimulants — have been shown to increase blood pressure, cause heart racing, and increase anxiety, in a study published last fall by Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Another study by Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, published this March, found similar concerns:

The researchers found that healthy adults who drank two cans a day of a popular energy drink experienced a 10-point increase in their blood pressure and a five- to seven-beat increase in heart rate. The study is published in March in the Annals of Pharmacotherapy.

These are “healthy adults” being affected this way.  But our children are also downing energy drinks in record numbers, looking for a quick after-school pick-me-up, or as a sports booster, without understanding the real risks. With their smaller bodies, the 50 to 500mg of caffeine typically found in one can will have much greater effects on children. There is also a concern that children are becoming addicted to caffeine because of energy drinks.

In the study, Griffiths highlights the cases of nine patients treated by a US poisons unit after having an energy drink called Redline, which contains 250mg caffeine. Eight of the nine were boys, with the youngest aged 13. Their symptoms ranged from nausea and vomiting to tremors, chest pain and a racing pulse. (guardian.co.uk)

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After years of experimentation, I have come up with the perfect recipe for easy, hearty, healthy, stick-to-the-ribs tasty chili, right in the slow cooker.  And I’m going to share it with you.

But first, let’s talk about what you can do to make your chili — and all your cooking, really — more “green.”

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This great video has been circulating around the birth-activist regions of the blogosphere recently, since it first aired a few days ago.  It’s a television commercial for a bed, and the characters in the commercial are no actors.  It’s actual scenes from an actual family, giving birth at home while a peaceful soundtrack plays, and voiceovers talk about the miracle, the specialness, the joy of birth, and the tradition of birthing at home.

There is no fretting about whether or not home birth is safe.  There is no screaming and panicking.  There is a secure and confident woman with her family by her side, bringing her baby into the world in front of our very eyes.

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Oh, the joys and delights of that perfect food… pizza.  Just looking at this picture is making me drool, how about you?

Takeout pizza always seems to taste better than homemade, doesn’t it?  It’s partly because of their specialty pizza ovens, but it’s mostly the excessive amounts of grease and salt.  Frozen pizzas are often full of MSG and artificial flavours.  Not to mention the potential risk of PFC’s in the boxes!

For those of us trying to save a little money, and keep our families healthy, here are a few tips on making your homemade pizzas super-yummy.

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Or are they?

In this weekly series, we’ll be looking at several baby essentials that really aren’t.  They may be useful in certain situations, but if money or space is tight, or if you’re just looking to simplify and reduce consumerism and waste, here’s how to get along just fine without these so-called “essentials.“

In Part 1, we questioned the crib.   Part 2 bemoaned the bucket.  Part 3 scrutinized the stroller.  Part 4 ditched the diapers.  Part 5 scrubbed the tub.  Part 6 busted the brain boosters.  This week, we banish the baby food!

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The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is reporting that a recently-published study by Health Canada found that the vast majority of canned soft drink and energy drinks contain bisphenol A, a known endocrine disruptor and estrogen mimic.

The study, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry in January, tested 72 canned drinks purchased in 2007 and found detectable levels of BPA in 69 of them.  The levels are within the limits of what Health Canada considers “safe,” however, some critics believe that there is no safe level of this chemical, pointing out that studies in peer-reviewed science journals have shown that BPA can increase breast, ovarian, and prostate cancer cell growth in animal testing even at very low doses.

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Ahh, the joys of iced tea.  Even in the depths of winter, sipping a tall glass of sweet iced tea calls to mind lazing around on the porch under a warm midsummer sun.  What’s more, it’s even good for you!

While there are some good bottled iced teas on the market with natural ingredients, making your own at home offers many advantages: less packaging waste, guarantee of no artificial ingredients or HFCS, unbeatable freshness, and complete customization for your taste preference perfection.

If you’ve been inspired, as I have, to green your beverages by making your own coffee and even soda pop at home, then here are some tips on making your own sweet iced tea.  After all, we’ve just survived February, we’ve earned a look ahead into summer!

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Or are they?

In this weekly series, we’ll be looking at several baby essentials that really aren’t.  They may be useful in certain situations, but if money or space is tight, or if you’re just looking to simplify and reduce consumerism and waste, here’s how to get along just fine without these so-called “essentials.“

In Part 1, we questioned the crib.   Part 2 bemoaned the bucket.  Part 3 scrutinized the stroller.  Part 4 ditched the diapers.  Part 5 scrubbed the tub.  This week, let’s bust the brain boosters!

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Am not.

But I dare say I might become one.

I do enjoy a good cup of coffee, but caffeine sometimes makes me edgy.  Though I have managed to mostly avoid the lure of Starbucks, I have been known to indulge in a white chocolate mocha at Second Cup, or a French Vanilla at Tim Horton’s… and don’t get me started about Iced Cappucino in the summer!!

Then I read 5 Ways to Green Your Coffee and I got the itch.

So I bought myself a french press and some fresh-ground, organic, Fair Trade coffee.  And I just had to share a little about the company behind my coffee.

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