Obviously, these things don’t just disappear! Instead, they get mixed in with our drinking water, contaminating everything around us, from the waterways they intersect with to the soil that we use to grow our crops. Why isn’t this a way bigger issue?

I think it may be because we like to believe that store-bought detergents and cleaning agents are good for us, even though for the most part they aren’t. They’re full of harsh chemicals that may cause us to break out in rashes, or that may irritate our allergies, or in the worst possible scenario, may cause us to wind up living in our own little bubbles to avoid contact with the contaminated outside world. Not pretty.

All-purpose cleaner by ATTITUDE

My husband and I tend to shop at IGA, where you always seem to get a random product if you spend more than $50 on groceries. One week we were handed a bottle of an all-purpose cleaning product made by Bio Spectra and marketed as Attitude, a certified eco-friendly company (they’re certified by EcoLogo(TM), which is an Environment Canada program). This particular bottle has some bold claims printed on the side:

ATTITUDE: Products that leave no trace on Earth or its inhabitants. Natural, ecological, biodegradable and non-toxic cleaning product that contains no petrochemical derivatives or color dyes. Made with water, coco and lauryl glucoside, alcohol and essential oils (lavender and grapefruit).

Pretty cool, right? If you go to the website, this product is also listed as a vegan product, as well as beig non-carcinogenic, hypoallergenic and free of artificial fragrances. Neat!

I really like this brand, because it’s super basic. The design as well as the listed ingredients are simple and straightforward. The packaging is non-existent (this bottle was sold as is, with no extra tags or boxes surrounding it), and the bottle is made of #2 plastic, so it is fully recyclable when you’ve finished using it. I’m not sure whether the company already does this or not, but if they offered refills that were just screw-top bottles, they could even encourage people to re-use the nozzle from their original bottle until it stopped working.

Overall, we’ve been using this cleaner around the house, and I have to say it’s impressed me both with its pleasant smell and its cleaning powers. We used it on a lot of caked-on grease we had on the stove after a night of cooking, and it sponged right off. I’ve also used it to clean windows and mirrors, and even my wooden desk (although I’m not sure you’d want to do this if your wood was untreated), so it’s been a good all-purpose cleanser for me.

In terms of other eco-friendly cleaning products, there are actually a lot of everyday items that clean a lot better than the crap you’ll get in a bottle from the store. Baking soda, vinegar and lemon juice are the triumvirate you’ll need to clean most things in your house. Here are some common uses:

BAKING SODA: Use baking soda to deodorize everything from your carpet to your trash cans to the inside of your refrigerator and freezer, to clean stubborn stains like coffee rings in your mugs, and as a paste this also works great on itchy mosquito bites or chicken pox.

VINEGAR: Another deodorizing agent, vinegar works great to freshen up the scent of your laundry (add it to the washer when your clothes are on the rinse cycle), comes in handy as an all-purpose cleaning agent, can unclog your drains (along with its trusty companion, baking soda), and cuts grease in a hassle-free way. And according to About.com, you can even use it as a cheap fruit and vegetable wash!

LEMON JUICE: Also according to About.com, lemon juice is great for cleaning copper, for mixing with vinegar to create a more neutral (or “clean”) smell, for freshening drains, and acting as a natural bleach. Apparently lemon juice “bleaches” things like white linens (or blond hair!) naturally, if applied and left to sit in the sun until dried. Neat!

Got any other eco-friendly cleaning tips and tricks?

The most interesting option for me, however, was the suggestion to use Evernote, a organizational tool that can keep track of just about anything. Acting as your “external brain,” Evernote is a free service that stores anything you want to remember, from phone numbers and addresses to URLs, photos, wine labels, to-do lists, notes to self, and even Twitter messages. Basically, if you want to remember it and have a way to capture it digitally—from computer to cell phone to digital camera, or even a hastily-scribbled napkin note that you later scan in—you can save it on Evernote.

Evernote had been recommended to me before by Craig Silverman, during a freelancing workshop I took via the QWF, but I wasn’t sure it would be useful to me. I’ve usually got a pen and paper on hand, or at the very least my cell phone can snap a quick picture, and now that I’ve got my iPod Touch I can even (laboriously) type up a little reminder to myself in the Notes app. Still, the thought of organizing my recipes without having to actually sit down and organize them all up front is definitely appealing. And think of all the paper I’ll save!

So I’ve signed up for the free version of Evernote and I’m on my way to download the desktop app right now right after I finally upgrade my OS to Leopard so that I don’t have to keep logging into their website every time I want to save something. I showed the site to my husband yesterday, and he was immediately wooed by the concept of saving wine labels, something that is relatively hard to index and search when it’s taped into a notebook, so it’s looking like Evernote will soon rule our household as the top organizational device.

Best of all, it’s only $5 a month (or $45 a year) if you want to upgrade to the premium version, which gives you an even greater monthly capacity for uploading items you want to save. If you’re the type who’s got tons of scribbled notes and can’t keep track of everything, this is probably a necessity. Personally, I’m giving the free version a whirl this month to see how much space I use, and if I need more I’ll sign up for the yearly package.

Do you use Evernote? Let me know what you think of their service, and how you use it!

Print is dead--or is it? (image via book/daddy)

As a conflicted ecological type, I continue to find myself torn on the question of e-books vs. “real” (i.e. traditionally printed) books. While the green side of me loves e-books for the way that they save on paper, protect our virgin forests, and otherwise keep the planet moving towards sustainability, the side of me that likes to get away from a flickering screen finds them frustrating. Add to this the fact that my eyesight is already quite terrible, as well as the fact that I tend to spend most of my waking hours before a computer screen, and you’ll start to feel my pain.

I can’t deny that e-books are cheaper than traditionally printed books, either. Many are free, whether this is because they’re in the public domain due to expired copyrights or because their authors have chosen to make them freely available, and even the ones you have to pay for are typically much less expensive than their printed counterparts. This makes sense, since there’s no expense involved in creating an e-book, aside from the time and technology you need to format them properly.

So while e-books are both green and cheap, and theoretically I should be all over the concept, I mostly find myself frustrated with them. For one thing, if you want to read e-books in Canada, it’s a bit of a challenge. Sure, you can read them on a laptop, or on your iPod Touch or iPhone, and even on your Crackberry, but Canadians still can’t purchase the (outrageously overpriced) Amazon Kindle, which is setting the standard for digital reading. Apparently only Americans are good enough to read things on this particular system, which claims to be easy on the eyes as well as glare-free.

Reading e-books on the iPod Touch (image via Stanza)

As if that weren’t annoying enough, if you’ve decided to read your e-books on your iPod (via an application like Stanza, for instance), there’s the problem of size. While a standard hardcover book is about 6″ x 9″, the iPod screen is only 3.5″ diagonally. You can adjust the size of the text, but not the size of the screen, which often leads to people squinting or peering at the device from extreme close-up angles. You know, the type of thing that used to drive your mom crazy when you were that close to the TV? I’m not sure whether anyone’s been doing any studies on the matter, but I somehow doubt this is good for our eyes!

So what’s a green and cheap gal to do? Sacrifice her eyesight for e-books that are good for the environment but terrible for her physical health? Destroy acres upon acres of forest land just to be able to read the latest Douglas Coupland novel? It’s a conundrum, for sure. There must be some sort of compromise. What do you think? Are e-books the only green choice, or is there a better way?

Stabilo's move easy pen (image via Stabilo.com)

I just purchased a new pen at the Co-op Bookstore (my favourite local school supplier) yesterday, originally thinking I’d pay the buck-seventy-five for a disposable gel pen, when I noticed their Stabilo display at the front of the store. I’d seen it before, as I’m a store regular, but had never really been in the market for a pen, so it hadn’t made an impression on me. Now, pondering another disposable, I gave it a second glance.

Offering a variety of colours, the German company’s move easy was originally aimed at children just learning to write. It’s a chunky pen, and comes in left- and right-hander versions with hollowed out grips where your fingers should naturally lie. It’s also a reusable pen, and customers receive 3 ink cartridges included with their first purchase. All of this for less than $10—what a steal!

Hey, this is the Green or Cheap? blog, after all.

Since I’d noticed my friend Larissa (one of the Co-op’s managers) using exactly this pen on several occasions, I knew it had to be a good product, and since I’d originally been thinking of buying another one of Stabilo’s products as a replacement for one that had recently run out, I decided to upgrade my purchase from cheap-o (yet recyclable) gel pen to reusable rollerball.

I’m now the proud owner of a pink, right-handed move easy pen, and I plan on putting it to work this afternoon!

If you’re interested in purchasing a Stabilo pen of your own, the Co-op Bookstore (2150 Bishop, Montreal) currently has plenty more in stock, in pink, yellow, blue and even one of the discontinued black-and-orange models. Whether you’re a lefty or a righty, they’ve got both styles available. Not in the Montreal area? Check Stabilo’s website to find a dealer near you.

Recycling your coffee: green or cheap? (image via coffee-exchange)

Yes, I’m talking about reheating the day-old coffee that’s been sitting in the bottom of my French press coffee maker. A quick Twitter/Facebook poll revealed that most coffee lovers consider this disgusting, and would never publicly admit to doing it, even in the name of thrift or green living.

One brave soul, my friend Ben McFarland, not only admitted to recycling day-old coffee, but also offered the insight that this is sometimes the only way one can open one’s eyes long enough to brew up the new batch.

Caffeine addiction aside, I’m still not sure whether this action qualifies as being green or cheap. After all, I’m not the only one who does it. Mark Sisson of the blog Mark’s Daily Apple offers the tip “Reuse coffee grounds” on his list of 99 Ways to Save Money on Food, and the ALT.COFFEE guide to the proper method of brewing great drip coffee at home merely cautions against reusing grounds more than ten times, for optimal flavour. Still, most of the mentions of “reusing coffee” that I’ve come across are more akin to the type of thing Lifehacker suggests in their article “Use Your Old Coffee Grounds to Clean Dishes, Kill Fleas, and More,” or as Natural Home Magazine suggests in “Multipurpose Coffee Grounds.”

So I put forth the question to you, dear reader: Is recycling your coffee grounds green, or just cheap?

“It ain’t easy being green.” —Kermit the Frog

Welcome to Green or Cheap?, the blog that chronicles one woman’s attempts to live green on not-so-much green*.

“Living green” has lately become more of a commercial catchphrase, used in the service of separating consumers from their money, rather than as a demonstrable commitment to environmentalism. As such, I often find myself trying to decide whether my actions are done out of a real desire to “be green,” or if they’re merely the result of my own natural disinclination to spend a lot of my hard-earned money on fads—or worse: straight-up junk. After all, green claims do not necessarily guarantee a green product; just think about all the greenwashing you’ve seen, trying to cash in on people with an environmental conscience.

As a freelance writer, I’m committed to living well on a budget, so I’ve already got a cheap-eats blog on the go at Shoestring Montreal. By contrast, Green or Cheap? will chronicle my attempts to live green on a freelancer’s salary, something that can definitely be done, but will undoubtedly challenge my notions of environmentalism and sustainability, and possibly my commitment to good hygiene as well.

So, am I green or just cheap? Read the blog and find out!

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* To clarify for those who aren’t American, the second reference to “green” in this phrase refers to money, which unfortunately only seems to make sense in the U.S., especially since Canadian bills (and many other bills around the world) aren’t actually green.

Ashes to ashes, compost to compost (image via yourgreenfriend.com)

This is probably going to sound a bit crazy, and more than a little morbid, but I now know how I want my body to be disposed of after I die: COMPOST ME!

As someone who’s concerned about environmental issues and is a bit of a recycling freak, constantly asking my husband “Do you think we can we recycle this?”, I found James Glave’s front of book piece, “Decomposting Bodies,” in the latest issue of The Walrus super interesting. Essentially, the piece discusses developments in natural ways of disposing of human bodies in a funerary environment, and points to a Swedish biologist named Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak who has developed a technique called promession.

As described in the article, this is what happens to a body that is disposed of in a “green” manner via promession:

“The dearly departed are first supercooled in liquid nitrogen to about minus 196 degrees C, then shattered into very small pieces on a vibration table. [...] Next a vacuum is used to evaporate moisture while a metal separator [...] shuffles aside fillings, crowns, titanium hips, and so on. [...] Finally, the vaguely pink crumbs are deposited in a large box made of corn or potato starch.”

After all of this, your earthly remains are turned over to your family, whereupon you can be buried in shallow topsoil with a tree or shrub planted on top. Pretty cool, no?

Okay, maybe you’re not sold on the idea, which sounds fairly clinical? It’s at this point that the piece really gets interesting and compares this slightly sci-fi sounding procedure with the typical North American mortuary customs. It gets really gross, really fast, describing most human remains as “toxic skeletal sludge,” which are concealed far below ground, likely to prevent the putrefying corpse from messing up the perfectly manicured lawns up top. Or, if you prefer the concept of cremation, you’ll be burned in a furnace that releases “a cloud of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, along with the aerosolized mercury from a lifetime’s accumulation of dental fillings.”

Not exactly environmentally friendly, or even aesthetically pleasing.

Promessa (the company that’s about to start offering promession in Sweden) does eventually have plans to bring their operations to Canada, though it’s unclear as to whether or not licenses will be granted. I’m hoping they will, as most of the North American methods of dealing with bodies have always struck me as oddly barbaric and disgusting. Upon reading the description in The Walrus, however, I announced to my husband that I wanted to be promessed (is that the right past-tense for this procedure?) when the time came. After all, if you can’t have a Viking burial or be shot into the Sun (or even have a “Handmade Funeral“), what’s cooler than being supercooled and shattered into a million tiny pieces?

P.S. I’m still debating organ donation, which seems like a nice method of recycling all your essential human organs, but the concept of someone else having my heart or kidney or liver still kind of creeps me out on a personal level.

(Originally posted on my personal blog, Laura Roberts, Button Tapper)