Tomorrow, Friday November 23rd, is Buy Nothing Day in North America.

What that is: “Buy Nothing Day is an informal day of protest against consumerism observed by social activists. In 2007, Buy Nothing Day falls on November 23rd in North America and November 24th internationally. It was founded by Vancouver artist Ted Dave and subsequently promoted by the Canadian Adbusters magazine.”

Adbusters themselves explained the motivation for Buy Nothing Day concisely in last year’s bulletin: “Recycling, protecting our waterways, driving hybrid cars — all the old environmental imperatives — are great, but it’s becoming obvious that they don’t address the core problem: we have to change our lifestyles, we have to change our culture, and we have to consume smarter and consume less.”

I appreciate the inclusion of the idea that we need to “consume smarter”.
Having observed this day for a few years, I know all about the challenges you get from friends, coworkers and family. From “how am I supposed to get to work if I can’t buy tokens?” to “how are we supposed to eat if we can’t buy groceries for dinner?”. Which, hand to the Sky Bully, are the sort of questions I have been asked. Questions which miss the point. The point of Buy Nothing Day is to, for one 24-hour span a year, make conscious an activity which has become at once unconscious and an end in itself.

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As a proud Canadian, I loves me some snow. Loves it, loves it, loves it. When I wake up in the morning, look out the window and see white rooftops, I squeal with delight. Seriously, squeal. Which can be hard on a sleeping partner (who fortunately finds it “charming”).

And Toronto didn’t mess around this year, our first snowfall is big and fluffy and pretty and yay!

I say boo to the forecasters who get all “it’s another beautiful day” when it is unseasonably warm in Nov/Dec/Jan. Usually accompanied by a not-so-innovative quip about shoveling. It is not a good thing when it’s hot in November.

We’re given many opportunities to ignore the seasons. We can get strawberries and goat’s cheese in the dead of winter. Everything is available all the time, for a price.

So how about a little bit of living in the moment. Instead of moaning about how it’s too wet, too cold, too slushy, we pull up our woolly northern socks and get on with enjoying our four uniquely fantastic seasons.

To facilitate that enjoyment, I’m sharing with y’all my family tradition: Snow Cake. “Snow Cake” is a white cake with white icing that can only be made once a year, because it can only be made on the first day of real snowfall. If you see a few rogue flurries that’s great, but it only means that Snow Cake day is on its way — it’s not time to break out the spatulas just yet. The rule is this: a true Snow Cake can only be made when there is a solid (if skimpy) layer of snow which stays on the ground for at least half a day.

But it’s worth the wait. What makes a Snow Cake what it is the anticipation and the event-ness around making it. How it is linked to the weather and the season. And, of course, the jaunty snowperson you put on top — meticulously applied with chocolate chips in the company of friends, family, pets… and then shared with the same (with the possible exception of pets).

There’s no one special recipe, any basic white cake and icing recipes will do, but if you don’t have any, you can use mine.

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I got my period this morning, and I’m - pardon the pun - over the moon.

Not because I thought I was pregnant (although I am indeed glad not to be pregnant right now). No, my menstrual joy derives from two sources.

One: I’m not on the birth control pill right now. I was on the pill until this past winter, and since coming off it, have had very irregular and sparse periods, which is - although not unusual - a bummer. It’s not nice to feel like your body isn’t working properly, and particularly not nice to feel that an artificial pill you took messed you up good and proper. But I was greeted by a throbbing uterus this morning, and damn, it’s nice to feel my body working like it should. I didn’t realize how much I liked ovulating until I stopped. Now that things are up and running as normal, I can’t help but feel like there’s something pretty magical about my cyclical peaks of progesterone and estrogen - it’s like there’s a little alchemical lab right in my tummy.

And,

Two: Eco-friendly menstrual products. My eagerly anticipated package arrived in the mail last week, with a collection of re-usable cotton panty liners (in a variety of shapes and colours), reusable panties - which have the cotton padding sewn right in, and - that most awesome of menstrual products - a reusable cup.

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photo by Deborah Samuel, via cbc.ca

If you are a book geek like me, you’ll know that last night was the long-awaited and highly publicized announcement of the prestigious Giller Prize, awarded at a glitzy black-tie Gala at the Four Seasons Hotel. Elizabeth Hay took home the honors (beating out my pick, Alissa York,) but what is perhaps more interesting is what Canada’s First lady of Literature, Margaret Atwood, brought with her to the gala. From the Toronto Star this morning:

…two of the most notable guests took a pass on that menu and instead brought their own dinner in a box.

Former Giller Prize winner Margaret Atwood and her husband, Graeme Gibson – author of The Bedside Book of Birds – quietly declined the food being passed.

The reason: They were protesting the Four Seasons’ role in a massive resort development in Grenada that threatens an endangered species: the Grenada dove.

The two toted a gym bag to the festivities and dined on their own home-made spinach and cucumber. They also drank their own sake, while others at their table (including former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson) ate the beef and drank the wine the venue provided. Apparently I’m not alone in thinking this is an odd, and perhaps convenient form of protest. From the smart folks at Quillblog:

Not to be cynical, but if Atwood and Gibson really wanted to show solidarity with the Grenada dove, wouldn’t it have behooved them to boycott the ceremony altogether? They could have put out a press release explaining their absence and got the same amount of coverage. But by picnicking they managed to make a show of their anti-establishment credentials and still retain pride of place at the literary status-symbol night of the year.

I’m not entirely sure what the bringing of their dinner in a bag was supposed to accomplish, but if it was press, I suppose I’ve proved their success merely by writing this. Thoughts?

CONNECT ART Fundraising Event

WHEN: Thursday, November 15, 2007 @ the Centre for Social Innovation
WHERE: 215 Spadina Avenue, 4th Floor
TIME: 6:30 - 9:00 p.m.

Women’s Healthy Environments Network (WHEN) in conjunction with the Art Gallery of Ontario Youth Council invites you to attend CONNECT ART: Making the Connection between art and the environment. The event will showcase environmental art by youth, a silent auction and the opportunity for artists and participants to create environmental art. Come and enjoy tasty vegetarian and organic food and drink, and mingle with like-minded individuals.

WHEN is a non-profit, charitable organization that works with communities on prevention initiatives addressing environmental links to health.

CONNECT ART is a unique, interactive and educational event open to the community that will also have opening remarks from the Hon. Jean Augustine, information about WHEN, a silent auction and the opportunity for participants to produce art from recycled materials. Be sure to bring your paper, fabrics and any other recycled pieces for the installation.

Film Friday isn’t until tomorrow, but a girl has to plan!

If you find yourself in Toronto this weekend, head down to the Planet in Focus International Environmental Film and Video festival. The films are a fantastic mix of genre and style that explore a wide range of issues. Festival Director Candida Paltiel suggests that “The festival transcends class, gender and other boundaries because of its broad definition of environment.”

It’s so good.

Documentary filmmaker, writer and environmentalist Mark Haslam founded PIF as a one day film screening in 1999. Since then, it has grown into five-day event with year round programming including a growing archive of environmental films. Between movies, check out the eco-fair, Activist Cinema Roundtable, Green Pitch competition, panel sessions, programs for children and opportunities to chat with the filmmakers.
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I just wanted to post a quick follow-up to Erin’s previous post about early puberty.

The trend towards early puberty is scary and strange. We know that girls with high body fat are more likely to start early, but there are other environmental factors that are clearly at least partially responsible, namely endocrine disruptors.

I have done so much research on endocrine disruptors – synthetic chemicals that act like hormones - it came close to making my eyes as well as my heart bleed. It’s scary stuff.

A staggering variety of synthetic chemicals are capable of acting like hormones, most usually estrogen. The lining of tin cans, plastic bottles, the runoff from oil refineries and paper mills, chemicals in cosmetics and soaps - the list is endless. Once they get into an animal’s body (such as your own) they can interfere with hormonal circuits and can send things haywire: early puberty, miscarriages, abnormal sex characteristics (especially in wildlife, like fish and reptiles, which can switch gender more easily), altered ratio of male to female offspring, cancer. The list goes on and on.

One very curious thing about this is that the chemicals in beauty products are frequently capable of acting like endocrine disruptors. So young girls start using make-up and nail polish to look like teens, which quite possibly could accelerate their transition into puberty (obviously we can’t prove this for sure but the evidence is mounting).

This definitely isn’t ironic, it’s not fitting - god I’m not sure what the word is for it.

But it is sickeningly weird.

As I filled up the kitchen sink to wash my dishes, I thought of a question I would like to ask the Shameless peoples — which eco-friendly products have you tried that work and you would recommend to others? And on the flip side, which eco-friendly products would you like to debunk as good ideas in theory which in practice, well, suck?

The reason I think of this as I go to wash my dishes is that I am not washing these dishes for the first time. These are my post-dishwasher dishes (PDDs). All of the finest in automation and technology and I’m left emptying the contents of my dishwasher into two piles: clean, and wtf. And what has turned my dishwasher from a helpful timesaver into a useless block of horse pucky? Ecofriendly dishwasher detergent.

I’m not speaking from a ‘one attempt and bail’ pespective. I’ve been trying to use ecofriendly detergent for years. All different brands, all different formulations. And I do all the right optimizing-your-dishwasher rituals, like running the tap until it is piping hot before pressing start, making sure my dishes don’t lie around fermenting, saying encouraging, supportive things as the cycle starts… And still. I look at my stack of wtf glasses, plates, and cutlery, and sigh.

But I want to believe that there are effective eco-friendly alternatives to most of what we consume. And while I am starting to despair that is true for dishwasher detergent, I do have plenty of evidence it is true for other products — which match, or surpass the “conventional” option. So I want to take a moment to itemize those eco-friendly products I couldn’t do without. An exercise in restoring my faith in the eco-friendly (and smiting the products which give eco-friendly a bad name).

Adria Vasil’s Ecoholic is a great resource for this (reviewed in the brand new issue of Shameless magazine I believe), as is her weekly column in NOW magazine.

(Unfortunately I don’t actually own a copy of Ecoholic at the moment: it came out, I thought it was great, we bought it for Christmas for family, then forgot to get one for ourselves. Duh.)

But outside of expert advice and back in the field, which day-to-day eco-solutions work for you, and which don’t? And for this question, I’m putting granularity to the side. Big or small, frivolous or essential as you like.

I’ll start:

The Good
* glass tupperware

* reusable, rollupable, shopping bags

* coffee/tea travel mugs

* bikes
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The food system is a juicy topic lately. We’re starting to understand just how ecologically complex our food system has become, but there are political and social issues at play as well. If you’ve ever tried to untangle the mystery behind how our food is sourced, you’ve probably asked yourself questions like, Why is local food sometimes more expensive than imported food? How hard is it for Ontario farmers to get their goods to local stores? Why are farmers markets often full of resellers instead of farmers?

Just one of the keys to understanding the complexity of the food system is locked inside the Ontario Food Terminal – the immense physical space where food first touches down before being shipped off to Ontario stores, restaurants and ultimately within the digestive tracts of the lovely folks within this fair province.

A rare opportunity to take a tour of the Ontario Food Terminal happens this Thursday, as part of Alphabet City’s Food Festival. Each year Alphabet City explores a different concept through a publication and an “arts and ideas” festival. Last year they studied Trash, this year Food, and in the next few years they will work on Fuel, Water and Air.

This tour is a big deal because unauthorized folk are not normally allowed in the terminal. It is the “largest wholesale fruit and produce distribution centre in Canada and ranks in the top five by volume wholesale fruit and produce distribution centres in North America.” You’ll see big chain stores bartering for cases of cucumbers, chefs looking for exotic passion fruit, and smaller shops taking what lettuce they can get.

I can’t make it into town myself, but if you happen to go, let me know what you learned.
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