Tag Archives: environment

Do I Look Like a Bathroom to You?

Posted on by by Earth and Money
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Squirrel with a Starbucks CupDISCLAIMER: Today’s post has absolutely nothing to do with personal finance and only a little to do with the environment. Today’s post is a rant.

This is actually a little embarrassing…yesterday, a squirrel peed on me from up above in a tree. For those of you counting, this is the second time this month that an animal has peed or pooped on me. Earlier this month, a bird took a crap on my shoulder. Yesterday was worse. The pee actually bounced off my shoulder and up onto my face before landing down the front of my jacket. At first I thought it was just water and I couldn’t figure out where it had come from. Then I looked up and saw him staring down at me, with that wily little smirk of his and I put two and two together.

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Slow Death by Rubber Duck – Book Review

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Back in early March, I told you about the dangers of eating microwave popcorn, because of a chemical called PFOA. And earlier this month, I told you that the Government of Canada had declared a chemical called triclosan toxic to the environment. Both of these chemicals are things we come into contact with on a regular basis in our daily lives. To find out just how much we’re affected by these and other household chemicals, authors Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie locked themselves in a chemical-laden apartment for a weekend. They tested themselves before and after the experiment, and the results were published in a terrific book called Slow Death by Rubber Duck: How the Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Life Affects Our Health.

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Links Grow on Trees – Earth Day Edition

Posted on by by Earth and Money
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Earth Day | Source: www.earthday.orgThis Sunday, April 22nd, its Earth Day around the world. In honour of that, I’m issuing a challenge to everyone who reads this blog post – think of one way in which you can reduce your environmental impact, and go out of your way on Sunday to do that. And whatever it is that you decide to do, I’d love to hear about! Leave a comment explaining what you did or are planning to do – you could be an inspiration to others! Not sure what you can do? Here are some ideas:

  • Leave the car alone for one day and power yourself everywhere you need to go, by biking or walking.
  • Lots of people like to go grocery shopping on Sundays, take reusable canvas bags with you and say no to plastic grocery bags.
  • Instead of going to the grocery store on Sunday with those canvas bags, get on your bike and take them to a local farmer’s market to buy local goods straight from the farmers, and support your own community at the same time.
  • Doing the laundry on Sunday? Don’t use the dryer – create a clothes line somewhere in your house or in your yard and hang all your clothes to dry!
  • Contact your local politician and ask him/her what he/she is doing for Earth Day. Tell him/her that you want to see a renewed focus on environmental issues in your area. Make sure that being green is on his/her mind.

This is just a small sample of things you can do to lower your impact. But you don’t need to just do them on Sunday. Do something on Sunday and then keep doing it, see how long you can go before you switch back to your old ways, if you ever feel the need to.

Last week’s article about planning a green and frugal wedding, focused on invitations, was featured in several blog carnivals, including

Finally, here’s a look at what I’ve been reading in the blogosphere this week:
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Planning a Green Frugal Wedding – Food

Posted on by by Earth and Money
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Wedding Food | Source: avlxyz on FlickrLast week, I wrote the first instalment of my green, frugal wedding series by talking about how I was foregoing traditional paper invitations in favour of electronic invites and wedding websites. Today, I’m going to talk about food and drink, another issue where you can either stick to traditions, be green, be frugal or better yet, be both.

As I said last week, being either frugal or environmentally responsible when it comes to weddings often requires you to challenge the status quo or the established wedding traditions, and food is no exception when it comes to this. In our case, we are challenging the established traditions about as much as possible, but I’ll get to that in a second.

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What Do You Need in Your Cage?

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Monkey in a CageI’m a big fan of a podcast called Radiolab. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, every week they tackle one big concept – like time, sleep, or identity – and they talk about it for about an hour. Its extremely engaging and never uninteresting. And it was while listening to an episode about zoos, yes that’s right, zoos, that they touched upon a fascinating concept that can be related back to society, lifestyle, money and happiness. You see, at some level, we are all just animals in a cage.

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