Redecorating and other bits and pieces

How is the New Year been so far for you? As crazy as here? My daughter lost my wallet yesterday, just to name one issue.

We had the Law Enforcement Agent from the city of Kitchener in yesterday to look at our windows. We heat very little (20 C is all we need) and the winter has been mild so far but with these windows we'd be heating the outdoors too. And they are wet and we get mould that I am sure was here before they painted the walls before our move in. The management sees nothing wrong in the windows because they are cheap and don't care but hopefully the agent can help us sort the issue.           
Today we finally got our organic box back. I'm so glad because our fridge and obviously we have been starved of organic produce during most of the holidays. Eating has just gotten better again. For Christmas I got a small food processor and now we even make our own sugar and salt-free organic peanut butter. Yum!

My most recent project was to sand off and paint the sturdiest chair in out apartment. It's a zebra now! Beautiful!! It's a unique chair now more than ever, we never had a match to it any way since it was given to us by family together with a dinner table and three chairs (they had broken one). But we don't need four ordinary chairs at the table because we have a high chair too so this fourth one adorns our living room. And it goes well with the rest of our black, white and dark green furniture. I also repainted the top of our coffee table that my husband redid over a year ago. He never sealed the top though so the paint kept chipping off. I put glaze on top, all good. I am still working on our former TV stand that has been turned into a play counter for our daughter. It's got a white base so far and large farm animal stickers around the side but I want to paint geometrical shapes still on top. Why buy new furniture if redecorating is so much more fun. 

Makes me think about a change in career considering the slow job market for office admin/ tourism jobs here in KW.  I have also taken up tutoring German and showing Cutco knives to whoever is interested. If you have read the article of David Suzuki that probably appeared in almost every paper in Canada on Christmas you know that these aren't the worst jobs and products. Services, contrary to manufacturing and mining, often do not harm the environment. Services generally do not produce (as much) carbon emissions, destroy landscapes and forests, pollute air & water. The article was great and I am sure I read something similar from him the year before - it needs constant reminders that we should not be so materialistic and wasteful. Did I mention that Cutco has a forever guanrantee? Cutco knives need very little resharpening (every 10 years or so) and the company does this for free for you forever. Cutco also takes back and recycles your old knives and therefore reduces a lot of waste. I could not sell anything I don't personally like but Cutco I do like not only from the environmental perspective.  

Did you read the article of the UN advising people all over the world to stop consuming so many dairy and meat products in order to stop climate change? Super interesting too. Producing food for cows and Co. produces as much carbon emissions as burning fossil fuels for cars, industry and households. And it takes good food, grains etc. away from our tables. You know we already don't each much meat but still have quite a number of dairy products in our household such as milk for the child, yoghurt for mum & daughter, cheese for all. Not sure if our dairy consumption is below, above or at average with the rest of the population in Canada, Germany and elsewhere. Something would be missing without these dairy products in our household. Especially since we can't grow tropical fruits here which would be a nice replacement but other than that I can't even think of one. Maybe that's how lots of people think about replacing meat. Although I find lentils, grains, greens, vegetables, beans are around in such a variety that I have certainly as many options there as there is different cuts of meat.         
Does any of your new year's resolutions help the environment?

Canada's biggest parties and their goals for the environment

.. if they get elected that is. CPAWS together with a bunch of other environmental organisations went to ask the 5 major parties to answer a few questions about greenhouse gas emissions, protecting public water sources, public transit, oil sands, chemicals in every day products and more. Follow the link to read the answers. Guess what, the blue party (Conservatives, for all Non- Canadians) did not reply at all! Do I dare to say it?: Don't you dare voting for them! 

Blame the cows and sheep?

Here's another contribution from Goleman's book: "Researchers in NZ mapped the genome of ruminant animals like sheep and cows to discover the genes that regulate flatulence, in order to develop a vaccine that will greatly reduce “flatulent emissions” from livestock  -which now account for 28% of human-related methane buildup. Meanwhile plant-breeding geneticists in the UK are attacking methane emissions via genetic improvements in digestibility, sugar content, and protein-breakdown enzymes in grazing grass." 

Methane is apparently a worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and it's produced largely by sheep, cattle and growing rice. Something in the whole development of the planet's biodiversity did not prevent this from happening. Evolution did not think there is anything wrong with that methane production. But evolution never expected to have such huge numbers of cows and sheep roaming the planet because humans chose to domesticate them and start a mass production of these creatures in order to provide us with tons of meat and dairy products. Nor did evolution calculate on so much rice being grown to feed billions of hungry mouths. So to go and mess around with the animal make-up is a cruelty to me. Those animals can't argue or defend themselves, they are like slaves and we therefore think we can do with them how we please!? OMG! Why don't we change instead something in the human body that will stop us from say being so reproductive (reaching 7 billion people on Earth this year should do, shouldn't it) , or digest meat and milk. Seems creepy does not it?












Michael Pollan points out in his book In defense of food that way back in the days, like centuries ago, human beings were not able to consume dairy after they had been weaned off mummy's breast. It was evolution that eventually gave in and made dairy products digestible for the human body. Vegetarians live a healthier life anyway, so away with beef burgers and bacon. I'm not a vegetarian but once or twice a week a small piece of meat is all that ends up on our dinner plates. If we all ate less meat the number of cows and sheep would automatically go down, that's demand and supply logic. No need to get rid of them completely though. They've been around for at least as long as we have and they deserve it but in small numbers there's less harm, it's more sustainable. Therefore eat quality over quantity when it comes to meat.   

It's all killing us

Have you ever noticed that almost everything we produce nowadays and the way we live actually harm us, are making us sick! – There are toxins in cosmetics, toxins in electronics, pesticides & herbicides in foods, greenhouse gases in the air from the use of fossil fuels, antibiotics and heavy metals in water, ... we produce tons and tons of waste and it's wrong how it's dealt with … the list is endless. Most of these things are somehow connected to human greediness and corporate profit-seeking, to people losing contact with nature and to the loss of community spirit.  Marketing, glossy magazines and TV shows suggest we better go shopping frequently, indicate what we must have, who we are when we own or not own this or that item, wear this or that brand, and so on. They reinforce thinking in status symbols, too. For our own sanity and the functioning of this planet we have to get away from that!

I’m afraid my child will be an outsider at school because I don’t take her to junk food restaurants, I don’t let her watch TV and play for hours in the internet, I buy her clothes at Value Village, I don't drive her everywhere … Do I want to do this to my child or will I have to give up on my values and give in to all the consumer frenzy that causes more damage than benefits? 

The green rule of consumption, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, is not going to work until we get back to basics and remember what we really need to be happy in live. Uhm, we might have to become one big bunch of hippies - without the drugs, please.  Love's a nice thing, if not the greatest thing ever.

Unfortunately the environment as an argument does not seem to cause much change in the behaviour of our society so I think that we have to argue with “your health is at stake” in order to make people rethink their actions. It's not even a lie! I am afraid though that some people have a bigger problem to believe this argument than to believe what marketing tells them and what politicians tell them. One solution would be to introduce a school subject called "Ecology" or "Environmental thinking" and brainwash kids right from the start. They would grow up to be the healthiest generation ever.