Forty-Five - Delay! Hold tight!

Sorry for the delay! We promise one for this week--we've been working on it and were hoping to have the CSA all signed up and ready, but there have been some delays. We don't want to post until we confirmed, but we have two choices and we'll be in touch by mid-week, promise! We are having trouble finding someone to split the CSA from North Creek Community Farm. If we can't find someone, we will sign up for half bushels from Vasa Gardens. Though, if you would be interested in splitting, let us know! :)

Forty-Four - Shower Curtain Liner

Guthrie and I got a nylon shower curtain liner. According to the green year, most shower curtain liners are made with polyvinyl chloride (PVC). When heated (like from a hot shower) it can emit harmful cancer causing gases. Instead of breathing this in every time we take a shower, we have purchased a waterproof nylon liner that is machine washable.

Stay warm and safe at home!

Peace!

Forty-Three - Wine Corks

 

This is a special Valentine's Day post. When you purchase your wine, keep in mind the kind of cork it uses. Of course you can recycle the bottle, but what about the cork? I learned through the Cork Forest Conservation Alliance that cork trees are not cut down to harvest cork, and that you can recycle cork. I also learned that it takes more than 10 times the energy to make a screw cap over the cork cap, and it is lined with plastic (bpa?). Also, the plastic stoppers are made from petro-chemicals, where are not biodegradable and produce more than 10 times the greenhouse gases in its production. Guthrie and I are making a commitment to buy wine with natural cork. It's easy to tell if the bottle is a screw cap, but not so easy to know if the stopper is plastic or cork. However, we are making note of our favorite wines with natural cork and are going to stick with what we know. We are also collecting our corks and will bring them to Whole Foods for their recycling program partnered with Cork Reharvest. Cheers!

Peace!

Forty-Two - Greener Cookware

The cheap pots and pans laura and I have had for over the last 5 or 6 years have been beat up, scratched up, and, for a long time, have shown signs of teflon peeling as the non-stick coating gradually dissolves while under the duress of extreme heat. These pots and pans are made with a man-made material called polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) AKA Teflon, which has been shown to corrode and emit toxic vapors when under high heat over extened uses. Another man-made material, Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) or 'C8', has been used for many years to make pots and pans. A third substance used to create this cookware is petroleum which has America by the cojones to this day, even amongst growing sentiment against its use.

These materials have been lauded for their ability to repel oil, grease and water and, in general, make cooking easier for us. These materials have also been showing up in our bodies at greater amounts over the years especially over seas in countries that are using second-hand cookware at extreme heat for long periods of time. Dupont an avid user of PFOAs and PTFEs for a long time settled a class-action lawsuit with the Washington, WV community recently over abundance of PFOAs in the drinking water of the residents. This has led to 3 epidemiologists studying the level and impact of PFOAexposure on the health of Americans. The results of this ongoing study will be available this year.

Laura and I are green, no doubt about it. We want to know the story behind the goods we use; we want to know why a certain process is used and the materials used during that process to make products we buy. We are happy knowing that community members and epidemiologists are scrutinizing what we put into our bodies enough so that it is putting pressure on scientists to evaluate the materials used to making cookware more user-friendly while limiting the negative impacts to our health.

We are also pleased that the the handle of the 8" skillet is made of 70% recycled steel and the surface hard-anodized so it won't scratch. Plus, the skillet is versatile; it's oven safe up to 500 degrees which limits the amount of pans we use to cook and therefore have to wash, saving us time and energy.

Next up, we will be replacing our two large stock pots with one that is made from recylced materials.

Cheers!