Mar. 06, 2013 - Issue #907: Garbage Goes Green
The green Dear Abby
Ecoholic author on why Tofu Tuesdays and listening to Macklemore will save the planet”
/ Dustin Rabin
Think your actions are too small to make a difference? Think again.
Adria Vasil, author of the Ecoholic books and weekly column in Toronto's Now Magazine, was in Edmonton March 5 to share simple, practical ways to keep your body and the world from becoming a dumping ground for waste. The Toronto journalist started Ecoholic in 2004 as a green-advice column. For her it was a way to vent the frustration she felt from writing doom-and-gloom articles about social issues, corporate malpractices and impending environmental disaster.
"It was a place to offer positive solutions, offer concrete advice," Vasil says. "I'm like a green Dear Abby. But instead of giving relationship advice, I'm telling people how to get their roommates to stop bringing home bottled water."
In her nine years writing green-advice, Vasil has gotten questions on everything from the safety of drinking dehumidifier water (don't) to the most environmentally-friendly sex toys. The writer was invited by both the City of Edmonton's The Way We Green Speaker Series and the University of Alberta's Sustainability Speakers Series to speak at city hall and the Myer Horowitz Theatre, respectively.
Vasil says individuals have amazing power. If you don't like the chemicals in a deodorant, then don't buy it. If you want to see more local and seasonal fruits and vegetables in your grocery store, tell the manager. Companies want your money, Vasil says, and they'll make changes to keep you coming back.
"These things sound tiny, but the impacts are huge," she says. "It's about tackling the things that we have control over. If we all change our own little corners, we can change the world."
Vasil offered four easy, planet-saving tips to the crowd at the Myer Horowitz Theatre Tuesday evening: eat less meat, buy second-hand clothes, don't waste food and use natural products.
Citing a 2009 World Bank study that provocatively claims meat animals produce half of all global carbon emissions—factoring in the CO2 that livestock exhale—Vasil says giving beef a break a couple of times a week is the quickest and best way to help the environment.
And you might want to listen to Macklemore and head to the thrift shop to get "those moccasins someone else's been walkin' in." Vasil says clothes production is hugely water-intensive, with one pair of new Levi's requiring 3000 litres of fresh water to produce. Multiply that by the 36 new articles of clothing the average person buys annually, and that's a lot of water.
"You think turning off the tap when you're brushing your teeth makes a big difference in the water you use?" she says. "Buying a pair of second-hand jeans does way more."
The author recommends only buying as much food as you need—and make a meal plan so none of it gets binned. Vasil says the food rotting in landfills represents 30 trillion litres of water needlessly wasted.
With pollution coming from burning fossil fuels and using harmful chemicals in manufacturing, it seems counter intuitive to introduce more toxins into our bodies through shampoos, deodorants and toothpastes. But researching what ingredients are safe and environmentally friendly can be a full-time job. So Vasil has taken the dirty work out of it and created her "Mean 15" ingredient list, available on her Ecoholic website. Is oxybenzone, petrolatum, retinyl palmitate or diazolidinyl urea on the label's tiny type? Nix it.
She has also teamed up with the CBC to expose the companies that are the worst greenwashers. Dawn dish soap, which claims to help save wildlife, contains triclosan—an ingredient that has been declared toxic to aquatic life. Or a shampoo called Organic Surge that had only one organic ingredient.
"Greenwashing is my biggest pet peeve," Vasil says. "Many corporations claim to be natural, organic or eco-friendly—they even put it right in their brand names. But Canadians are getting smarter, we're detecting the BS."
That's not to say there aren't good products out there. If you're in a hurry, she recommends checking the label for third-party certification, like Ecocert or Ecologo. But any real change to the planet is going to come from people doing their own research and asking their own questions.
"The banning of harmful chemicals all started with someone looking at a label and asking: what is this? Do we need this?" Vasil says. "So don't believe the hype. Don't believe something is good for you just because a corporation says it is."
Visit ecoholic.ca for Vasil's books, columns, blog and videos.
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