The Green Glove

Sunday, July 20th, 2008, 8:54 pm

My mother is coming to visit. I love my Mom. I love her abundant ideas for how I can improve my home, my job, my life. I love them so much that I’ve spent the last few days re-evaluating everything, stressing out and improving as much as I can, in advance, so I can be ah…flawless.

Mom has a bionic eye for dust bunnies and smeared glass, so the main focus today (and more tomorrow when the real cleaning lady comes) is deep cleaning my home. Thank God for Shaklee!

After trying many different eco-friendly green cleaning products over the years, I switched to Shaklee green cleaning products about 6 months ago and will never switch again. It was such a relief to find a line of products that are truly natural, eco-friendly, non-toxic, plus they are easy to buy online and they really clean well.

Friends tried to steer me towards simple homemade cleaning concoctions of vinegar and lemon juice, but I found that they didn’t work well on tough cleaning chores and left a lemony scent. I think clean should smell clean – like nothing. Just fresh air.

Shaklee’s Get Clean Starter Kit includes everything you can possibly need to clean every aspect of your home. Most of the products are highly concentrated, and the kit provides lots of mixing bottles. Retail price for the kit is $170.40 (but just $149.60 is you are a member). Their website states that the Starter Kit is equivalent to $3400 worth of standard cleaning products! I believe it, since in 6 months the only products I’ve had to re-order have been the laundry soap, dishwasher powder and dishwashing liquid.

So I need to cut this short and go back to washing the base boards, vacuuming the lamp shades, and polishing my brass guest bed, so by tomorrow night I’ll be ready. Except this time, Mom and her inspection glove will find my green clean home flawless.

Mary Beth Gonzalez

Greening the Family Reunion

Sunday, July 13th, 2008, 4:10 pm

My family reunited over Fourth of July weekend to celebrate Pop-Pop’s (my dad) 70th birthday. Seventeen Pryors from all across the country gathered together at my parent’s beautiful home on Sanibel Island on Florida’s west coast. My parents, three brothers and their families joined mine for 5 days of eating, laughing, swimming, kayaking, photo taking and story sharing of our past, present and what we each want for our future.

Since we hadn’t all been together in over 7 years, the occasion served as an interesting benchmark for how differently we all think about green today versus 7 years ago when I was first starting on my green path. I found that nearly every aspect of our weekend related somehow to our greener values and lifestyles.

- The fabulous Certaintees custom tee shirts I had produced for this special occasion were all organic. Lee Tracy, Artist and Founder of Certaintees, did a wonderful job with the special design and provided superb customer service. We made adult crew neck, women’s v-neck and children’s tees. To my delight, everyone loved them and wore this wearable art throughout the weekend.

- Most of the delicious food my mother prepared was organic. Organic hamburgers for the grill, organic green salad, fresh organic and local fruit, organic corn, milk and eggs and even organic coffee! And key lime pie with local limes from their key lime tree in the front yard.

- Our core family activities focused on enjoying the beautiful nature around us. Ten of us kayaked for hours one morning through the mangroves of Tarpon Bay part of Jay Norwood Ding Darling’s Natural Wildlife Refuge; a photographer took our group photo on the shell lined beach at sunset; we all enjoyed an evening boat cruise to play with and appreciate the local dolphins.

- The Sanibel summer sun is quite strong. We brought Dr. Hauschka’s powerful, holistic sunscreen, SPF 30 for Children and Sensitive Skin – a certified natural product made with organic plant oils and extracts. My young nieces and nephews slathered it on without fussing and without being told. That never would have happened when we were kids! In fact, my brothers and I were the only ones to get sunburned…

- One night, the little “no-see’ums” were out in force when we were on the beach waiting for the sun to set. Fortunately I had packed PatchCare – a box of 12 all natural, deet-free, very effective, mosquito repellent peel-stick patches. We quickly patched up and huddled together for maximum protection.

- As Dad’s birthday present, we gifted a set of special processional torches for his beloved local church, St. Michael and All Angels, in his name with an inscription. We thought it most fitting to give back to this special Sanibel Episcopal community that has brought him and my mother much joy and enlightenment.

- After church, a family trip to Noah’s Ark – the fabulous second hand store my mom managed for the church this past year. Everyone picked out one thing (a pair of shorts, a golf shirt, a Batman video, a china creamer, etc…) and I think the total bill was $38.

- And of course, no family reunion would be complete without the endless ‘recycled” stories of our youth, favorite Pop-Pop memories and 97 recycled photos on a custom DVD created by my sister-in-law.

Our reunion weekend wasn’t about being Green. It was about celebrating my Dad, reconnecting with each other and sharing with the youngest generation of Pryors what it means to be a part of our family. I loved how it was just natural to teach them how we care for ourselves and each other in organic ways while we appreciate our local community and the bountiful nature of our planet. The reunion became a remarkable, teachable moment for us all.

Mary Beth Gonzalez

Tags: family, organic, green, reunion

Green Goodies for Kids

Sunday, June 29th, 2008, 2:59 pm

Last weekend I brought a Panda, a Gorilla and a Penguin to my brother’s house for a visit with his family. Seems kids’ marketers frequently name their kid targeted products after animals so kids will love them more, and it seems to work. I was just happy knowing that my gifts were healthy, organic and starting them on their path to green.

The Panda was actually an Ecogear blue organic cotton backpack for Jake, my four year old nephew. The azure blue dye is non-toxic, and it closes with easy to close sustainable wood fasteners. All very cool but his Dad knew that the ultimate stamp of approval was mentioning that Peter Parker (Spiderman) had a backpack just like it. Then Jake knew that the Panda would be perfect for his first trip to day camp next week. You can see in this photo how much he likes it.

Lily, my seven year old niece and god-daughter, got the Gorilla, a pretty pink Ecogear mini-messenger bag. Also great for day camp, I thought this organic cotton bag would work nicely as a hip purse, a beach bag and a school bag. She seemed to think it would be quite perfect too. Then as I was explaining that her new flamingo pink bag was “green”, she was a bit perplexed. So I switched vernacular and spoke about how it was organic. “What does that really mean?” she asked. My brother’s eyes rolled as he waited to hear my children’s definition of the eco-friendly, sustainable environmental movement. I stuck with how organic cotton isn’t sprayed with nasty chemicals so it is better for your body and better for the planet. That seemed to do the trick.

Then Jake, Lily and their older sister, Sarah saw the Penguin. Yes, a box of Nature’s Path EnviroKidz Penguin Puffs – a healthy, organic, low sugar, low fat, low sodium whole grain (kamut, quinoa and corn) cereal. They all gave this rice and corn cereal a big thumbs up because it still tasted sweet in milk and they loved the big crunch. Good to know that there are companies making a healthy, kid approved, kids cereal. Plus good to know that 1% of EnviroKidz sales are donated annually to endangered species, habitat conservation and environmental education for kids.

It seems that we have a lot of green things to learn from the Panda, Gorilla and the Penguin. And I’m pleased that these endangered species got a little help too.

Mary Beth Gonzalez

iVillage.com

Tags: kids, green gifts, cereal

Green Concussion "Cures"

Saturday, June 21st, 2008, 7:18 pm

Last week I hit the wall.

Literally.

Well, actually, I hit the door.  In the middle of the night, I walked head on into my bathroom door and gave myself a concussion. So I’ve been trying to recuperate this week and thought I’d share the green concussion “cures” as prescribed by my doctor/husband and enhanced by me.

1. As much organic, undisturbed, natural sleep as possible. Here is where my cozy Under the Canopy organic sheets really make a difference as I camped out under my own canopy for extra hours this week. (Medical note: my mother/blog editor just reminded me of how a concussion victim isn’t supposed to be alone sleeping for the first 24 hours which is why she called me every hour on Monday from a sailboat in Florida during a storm to be sure that I could be roused to normal consciousness.)

2. Plenty of carbs! When your body is under stress, it craves carbohydrates so for once I gave in and made organic potatoes lots of ways – mashed with butter and cayenne pepper, baked with a little sour cream, little red potatoes dribbled with olive oil, quartered and baked Yukon gold potatoes with sea salt.

3. Drink Pomesmart organic pomegranate juice - 100% juice that contains calcium, potassium, iron and powerful antioxidants that can neutralize twice as many cell damaging free radicals as red wine and seven times as many as green tea. And it tastes delicious!

4. Mix 2 oz. water with two droppers of BRAIN – an herbal remedy from Dr. Richard Schulze that contains Ginkgo biloba leaf, Rosemary leaf and flowers, Kola nut and Cayenne pepper. This herbal product stimulates the brain’s blood circulation to hasten healing.

5. Now I know there is another one but I forget. I’ve been forgetting a lot lately. My phone number, the sequence to logging into my work computer, where I put my cup of Numi Green Rooibos tea, my husband’s work phone number, my Urban Organic password. The worst was when I rang for our elevator to apparently go run errands when my kind, elderly doorman reminded me that I was in my nightgown holding my purse.

So I think it’s time for another nap then more juice, more carbs and more BRAIN. There may be other, more conventional ways to treat a concussion but I’m happy knowing that this green medicine isn’t further damaging my shaken and rattled little brain. So until I’m back in the saddle it’s pass the potatoes please!

Mary Beth Gonzalez

Tags: green medicine, cures, concussion, potaotes

A Greener Dry Cleaner

Sunday, June 15th, 2008, 11:52 am

I gladly switched to better tasting organic produce and jumped at the chance to experiment with natural beauty products but using an organic dry cleaner seemed like such a risk. Since I moved to NYC in 1988, I have made a weekly trip to my friendly neighborhood, Korean dry cleaner. Until recently, in NYC the organic dry cleaner options were primarily outer borough businesses that would send a messenger to come pick up your dry cleaning at your building. Could I trust our expensive suits, my husband’s custom shirts and my white silk blouses to a dry cleaner I couldn’t actually look in the eye? Was it possible that my “dry clean only” clothes could get clean without those noxious dry cleaning chemicals I had grown up with?

You bet. This Earth Day my husband and I took the plunge and switched to Green Apple Cleaners – a new friendly neighborhood C02 green dry cleaner. This natural carbon dioxide technology is like washing your clothes in fizzy water…like club soda…and it is safe for our clothes as well as the environment. In fact, CO2 will actually remove the residual harmful chemicals hiding in your clothes from traditional dry cleaners who use harsh chemicals (perchloroethylene, hydrocarbons and silicone) that are hazardous wastes and ground water contaminants. These chemicals have been linked to the high incidents of leukemia among dry cleaner employees.

Plus the CO2 process actually helps the environment as their website explains:

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is naturally abundant in our environment, and it can be collected as a by-product of many industrial processes—as a result, our cleaning method doesn't add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. In fact, we use CO2 that would have been released into the environment, thereby reducing overall global emissionsof the gas.

I’ll admit that my expectations were low. I thought that maybe the clothes would come back looking like they had barely been touched. I knew that they wouldn’t smell like chemicals, and I figured that would be good enough. I didn’t expect that the clothing would be delivered in reusable garment bags, so I wouldn’t have all those plastic bags to throw away, and they drive around town in fuel-efficient vehicles for pick-ups and deliveries. While I haven’t yet noticed any significant difference in the quality of the dry cleaning, I know that by going chemical-free I’m doing something good for me and for my planet.

Check out their website to learn more and search the internet for local CO2 green dry cleaning options near you. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised how clean green can be.

Mary Beth Gonzalez

Tags: ecofriendly, green, co2, dry cleaner, leukemia