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: green gifts, kids, 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: cures, green medicine, 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, leukemia, dry cleaner

Sex and the Unchanged City

Sunday, June 8th, 2008, 1:32 pm

Oh, how far we have come in the 4 years since HBO’s Sex and the City waved goodbye to their television audience from the streets of Paris and NYC. We, as a community, have been at war both in Iraq and at home: a global climate war, a racial and feminist political war, an economic war. Yet somehow, in the new Sex and the City movie, Carrie and her girl-friends remain unaffected by it all. How is that possible?

I’m so very disappointed. Last night my husband and I (yes, he joined me and was one of the 10 men in the NYC theatre) watched the movie in disbelief. Don’t get me started on Mr. Big Screw-up as I don’t want to be a plot spoiler. I just couldn’t believe that these four women could live in such a time-warp. After all that has happened to our world in 4 years, how could they continue to live a life of label consumption and accumulation, jet setting and personal gratification?

-       &nb sp;  When Carrie is packing up her NYC apartment, she had three boxes: Take, Toss or Store. Where was the Recycle box?

-       &nb sp;  Who in today’s world flies clear across the country from LA to NYC and back at the drop of a hat like Samantha without thinking about their carbon footprint?

-       &nb sp;  How can these women all still be so shallow that they parade around in brand-new luxury clothing, outrageous accessories and $50,000 dinner rings? Have they not heard about the first R in the Recycling triangle, Reduce?

-       &nb sp;  When Louise, Carrie’s personal assistant, introduced Carrie to bagborroworsteal – a rental house for premium handbags, I thought perhaps Carrie would change her constant consumption ways and join the greener path of renting and recycling the finer pleasures in life. But then Louise is rewarded by Carrie buying her a fancy Louis Vuitton bag! (Recycling aside, what about the other R? Recession!)

-       &nb sp;  I had another glimmer of hope for Carrie when she announced that she would be wearing a vintage suit to her wedding. But oh how quickly was she then lured into the wedding world of couture designer excess and extravaganza.

It isn’t as if I expected Carrie and her aging gang to become eco-manical global warming activists but to have them emerge so completely unscathed by the most important events of the past 4 years is remarkable. And to see these women, who I related to at times in my single 30’s, be so completely un-relatable now was just plain sad. So sad that I felt compelled to share my thoughts today. Then, as I do with all my blogs, I sent a preview to my mom for her constantly constructive feedback. Ever the wiser one, she remarked, “yes, you are probably right, but who would go to see a movie about Sex and Recycling?”

Mary Beth Gonzalez

Tags: recycling, sex and the city

Green Bamboo Babies

Sunday, June 1st, 2008, 3:07 pm

Bamboo made some new best friends this weekend. Yesterday, my niece, the new mother-to-be, unwrapped a living room full of baby gifts: little pink dresses, tiny dollies, a baby bathtub, diapers, a car seat and virtually all the other things a new mother and her first baby girl “need”. For those of you who have attended a baby shower before, you know the prerequisite “oohs” and “ahs” that accompany every newly unwrapped gift. Well, yesterday, we took “ooh” and “ah” to a new level.

Hands down, the hit of the party was the smallest gift of the bunch. Inside a beautifully wrapped, small 8 ½ x 11 box lived the softest, the tiniest, the most elegant, the most pesticide-free, most sustainable and most bamboo baby clothes and woven baby blanket from Dreamsacks. Within seconds of opening the box, women were standing and squealing as hands reached across the room to touch the silky soft, natural fabric.

The baby outfit and gift set included a knit blanket, hat, socks, bib, long sleeve tee & pants. I explained that the baby clothes and blanket were made from bamboo, a sustainable natural product and that bamboo grows in the wild, free from pesticides and it is anti-microbial so it can help the baby stay odor free. (The moms loved that!) The fabric is breathable, dries quickly and feels so very soft. Plus, the light pink blush-like color further drove the moms in the room nuts because it didn’t scream PINK!

Tags: natural, gifts, baby, bamboo