Cool Kitchen Tools

One more thing about last week's Duluth Sister Cities delegation we had the pleasure to host. Not only was it a pleasant experience, they also left us an interesting gift: a very cool cutting  board made out of recycled card board, made locally (i.e. Duluth) by Epicurian!

 It's well-designed, tough, knife-friendly, even dishwasher safe. And it's got these cool-looking silicone gripper edges so it won't slide all over your counter top.

And not only that: the company has some inspiring ideas about how to run a business in an environmentally responsible fashion, investing in wind power, using renewable and/or recycled resources, diverting nearly all excess heat and materials to a co-generation plant, and only using non- or low VOC-emitting manufacturing processes.

You gotta love it when a company sees the bigger picture and not just the bottom line - and makes a good product to boot! Check them out at http://www.epicureancs.com/

Eco-Chic

Last Monday was Jacomyn's birthday (yaaay!), always a happy source of birthday cards, emails, phone calls and gifts. One of the gifts she got was from her sister Annemarie, back in Holland. Annemarie made this very cewl necklace, a real conversation piece. And the coolest thing about it: it's entirely made out of discarded and reused materials!

kewl or what?

The funky black bits are from a bicycle's old inner tube (the Dutch pretty much live on their bikes) that has been cut in a certain way to come out like this; the wood beads have been reused from an old necklace that had special meaning for both Jacomyn and Annemarie.

Now admittedly, my fashion sense is at about the same level as my sense of direction (I'm somewhat challenged in these departments); but I'm a sucker for all things hand made and well-designed that tell a personal story and are eco-chic to boot!

Let’s Settle This Once And For All

A quick primer for those who have been blissfully ignorant of “The Freshcut Christmas Tree vs. the Artificial Christmas Tree” debate: proponents of the freshcut Christmas tree point at the fact that it’s a natural product, often grown locally or regionally.

Proponents of the artificial Christmas tree point out the fact that the cut tree is a disposable item that gets thrown away after only a few weeks of use, whereas the artificial equivalent will last for many years.

So who’s right? Well, if you like the smell of freshcut pine and don’t mind the needle mess, then go for that real tree.
If it’s about low-cost convenience, then the tree of the collapsable plastic variety may be your thing.

Charlie brown got the right idea way back in the '60s

(from "A Charlie Brown Christmas", 1965)

Things get a bit more complicated, though, if we ask ourselves which option is less damaging to the environment. It all boils down to Carbon Footprints: how much energy was involved in creating a product from scratch and getting it into your hands? This number considers all energy that's involved: extracting resources, manufacturing, transportation, packaging, advertising, final disposal - and everything inbetween.

Turns out that the artificial tree (85% of them are made in China) has a pretty big carbon footprint. With 3505 Watts it’s over 20 times more energy-intensive than a real tree.
Artificial trees are also a petroleum-based product; manufacturing them involves a long list of toxic by-products.
Also, artificial trees will not last forever and break down after 6 to 10 years. Any petroleum-based will breakdown into toxic components, many of them cancer-inducing.
And lastly, when that old artificial tree becomes landfill, it will be there for hundreds of years, slowly oozing contaminants into our soil and water table.

Freshcut old Christmas trees will decompose (or get mulched) nicely; they helped remove carbon from the environment and provided a home and food for wildlife while they were growing. That stops the moment they get cut, of course. And if you live in an area where they don’t grow naturally (say California, the Arctic, most of Europe), then that tree has to be trucked in from very far away.

So there you have it folks, you heard it here first: the freshcut tree is definitely the lesser evil.
The even better solution: get a live tree, and replant it after the holidays. And if you’re fortunate enough and have firs growing near your house (like we do): decorate a tree on the spot, passers-by will love you for it.
Merry Christmas (trees)!

Embracing My Inner Geek

I'll be the first to admit that my passion for all things green borders on the realm of geekyness. I realized this when we got a shipment from the U.S. in; some fragile items that had to be packed with some protective material to avoid damage.
Opening the package I went all oo and ah the moment I saw what was used for protective material. Instead of the common foam chips there were these folded paper triangles. Not made of (toxic) plastic foam or bubble wrap, not made of (extremely inefficient high-embodied-energy) corn starch - no: just plain and simple paper.

A bunch of environmentally-friendly Expandos

It's called Expandos and hails from Denver, CO. I never thought I'd be reading the entire website of a packaging materials manufacturer, but I did. I was looking for a catch (there always is one, right?), but no: it's made out of recycled paper using Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) practices. It's bio-degradable and fully recyclable. It uses low-energy manufacturing methods and produces no toxic by-products or waste. Oh, and did I mention it works as good as if not better than conventional packaging materials?

Up close and personal - hi there, handsome...

Okay, call me an eco geek, but it's little things like these that make me happy. It almost makes me me wish we had lots of fragile stuff to ship out. They even offer this option to have your name printed on each individual triangle. Hmm, I can just see our logo there right now...

Bad Movies You Got To Love

I love my movies. All 400 or 500 of ‘em (well, almost of ‘em). There’s nothing like finding an unknown film in the Two For $5.99 bin, pop it in the DVD player – and enjoy an unexpected little gem: “Kitchen Stories”, “10 Items Or Less”, ”King Of The Corner”, “Off The Map”… Just because they stayed out of the Hollywood marketing machine doesn’t make them any less enjoyable.

Sometimes I slip, though, and pick a movie that friends told me I should watch. Like “Evan Almighty”. Of course it turned out to be a paint-by-numbers theology-lite comedy that didn’t live up to the exclamation-marked hyperboles on the cover. Okay, it gave me one or two brief chuckles, but its most redeeming quality was that it was short.

Still, there is one thing about this movie I really enjoy: it was produced with a Zero Carbon Footprint. After the shoot wrapped, the entire set was recycled. Carbon-offsets were calculated and purchased. Even the DVD was environmentally friendly manufactured, with packaging made out of recycled and bio-degradable materials.

Now this is not the first movie that was produced and distributed this way. Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” was probably the first one, and if you check the end credits for the Cohn Brother’s “No Country For Old Men” you’ll see it says “This movie was produced with a Zero Carbon Footprint”.

“Evan Almighty” moved this practice beyond the “eco geek” label that came with Al Gore, or the “art house” label you’d associate with a Cohn Brothers film. To my knowledge “Evan” is the first big-budget crowd-pleasing blockbuster to adopt this production model.

That’s something to be happy about; it gives hope more movies will follow suit.

I’m now almost grateful for this dud.