Posted By: emmaspirit on

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

Posted By: emmaspirit on

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: green, ecofriendly, co2, dry cleaner, leukemia

Posted By: emmaspirit on

Monday, May 26th, 2008, 3:24 pm

Do you ever try to put a particularly tough day in perspective and calm yourself by saying “hey, it isn’t like I’m curing cancer”. As if curing cancer is commonly known to be the toughest task in the world and the act of doing so would justify all extraordinary and self-less efforts. What if you could help prevent cancer in you and your family partially through simple green living? What if this seemingly difficult task was made easier by adopting the principles of adopting an organic and eco-friendly lifestyle? What if you could help prevent cancer by changing the choices you make everyday?

Sound too good to be true? I know. I hear it everyday. People are immediately skeptical. My husband, Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, has been treating cancer patients for over 20 years with his own medical protocol based on personalized diets, nutritional supplements and a non-toxic, green lifestyle. He can best explain his treatment and results so I’ll provide a link to his website where you can find case studies, press, testimonials and details on his protocol.

What you won’t find on his website is what you can do yourself to create the safest, least toxic environment possible for you and your family. This is the best protection you have against disease, and you don’t need fancy doctors or health insurance. We live in an increasingly toxic world with chemicals in everything from the rugs we walk barefoot on to the home cleaning products we pour on the home surfaces we touch to the personal care products we put on our skin to the food we use to fuel our bodies. When you rid yourself of the toxins around you and your family, you enable your body to focus on healing itself rather than fighting off the chemicals and your body can live in a purer, more natural state.

Tags: organic, cancer, green, healthy

Posted By: nhbneil on

Friday, May 2nd, 2008, 9:53 am

Greenhouse effect cure (there are no real cures but this may help till we can find one).
First I want to point out that there are no real, viable short term, or easy methods of curing our Global warming woes. The damage to the environment has already been done and is, for all intent and purposes, basically irreversible.
It is likely, however, that any type of plan to get rid of Global warming, will require some type of dramatic ecological compromises.
Some will say that all we need to do is give up industry on the planet and the world will eventually go back to the way it was. I say it is too late for that solution (as a short term solution anyway). The damage done by increased greenhouse emissions has already taken its toll. This is evident by the melting of polar ice and glaciers across the globe.
We cannot get the world back the way it was, even as of fifty years ago, much less stop the damage that will still occur in the future. Sure we could try to stop all industry that will cause pollution, but at what cost. Without industry we could not sustain the present world population. Giving up industry and sacrificing billions of people on this planet in the process, is not a viable solution (even trying to merely lower greenhouse emissions is at best a temporary solution).
My plan, however, will require the use of old tires and recycled plastics. Of course it will require some engineering feats also, and a few ecological compromises. The benefits of using these wasted products will far outweigh the compromises required.
My idea is to build large floating islands (white on top, to reflect sunlight back out of our planet) made from used tires (filled with co2) and recycled plastics. Yes there are engineering and ecological problems, but everyone has to admit there are worse problems in our current situation.
The biggest problem we have now is not just the fact that we have more greenhouse gasses trapping heat in, but we are getting less and less sunlight being reflected out from the planet. As the snow cover melts from more and more of the planets surface, the sunlight heats up more parts of the earth that once reflected light back out. It is like a dog chasing its tail (until it gets dizzy and falls from exhaustion). As global warming just keeps building on itself till the ecological balance fails, and this planet will no longer sustain the teeming human populations.
So the only feasible solution is to build a bunch of artificial reflection “islands” across the planet.
There will be other benefits realized, once we build enough of these islands. One of the problems associated with the increased temperatures we are experiencing is the possibility of increased hurricane intensity and frequency. Having enough of these floating islands in strategic points in the oceans will help to alleviate this problem also.
It is a well known fact that hurricanes form in areas of the ocean where the temperature rises above approximately 80 degrees Fahrenheit. If we can keep those areas below that temperature (by reflecting sunlight away), we can prevent the formation of hurricanes. Without these floating islands, hurricanes will probably continue to increase in intensity and frequency…
We need a solution to deal with our Global warming woes, and we need it now. Even if this is a difficult path to follow, it will pay off in the future.

Tags: green, environment, greenhouse effect, cures

Posted By: miguelb on

Friday, April 25th, 2008, 12:54 pm

Friday, April 25th: Use a travel/ceramic mug for your daily coffee!

Leave the paper cups and water bottles alone for a day.  Use a mug or plastic cup instead.  Submit text and photos of your doing your part to "Go Green" and participate in our Earth Week Daily Challenges.

Tags: earth week, green, daily, challenges