As I posted recently, I have been checking out The Green Book by Elizabeth Rogers and Thomas Kostigen. It’s a very handy paperback book filled with helpful and (most importantly) EASY tips to save energy, reduce waste, and generally act more responsibly.

This week I thought I’d share some of my favorites from their Travel chapter. They have all kinds of suggestions for planning your trip, getting there, staying at a hotel, sightseeing and eating out. There are a bunch of things in there that I hadn’t really thought much about, and some which are just worth repeating. Here are my top 5 from this chapter:

1. Linens. Use the same linens and towels in your hotel room throughout your stay.  The average hotel room consumers more than 200 gallons of water per DAY, or as much as your entire household typically uses in a day. Trimming the amount of water used by washing sheets and towels can save up to 40 percent of a hotel’s water use.
2. Suitcases. Pack lightly – every additional ten pounds per traveler requires and additional 350 million (!!) gallons of jet fuel per year, which is enough to keep a 747 flying continuously for ten years. As a serial over-packer – that one hit home for me!
3. Guidebooks. Research your travel online and print out only the pages you’ll need to reference. You’ll save time, money and paper waste. More than 800,000 travel books go to waste every year!
4. Toiletries. Pack your own shampoo, soap and toothpaste instead of relying on the ones provided by most hotels (and of course then you can pack your favorite Garden Girl products!). You’ll get the product you want and you’ll creaste less plastic waste. A single 300 room hotel in Las Vegas uses more than 150,000 plastic bottles of shampoo per year.
5. Water bottles. Use and refill as single (preferable stainless steel or BPA-free plastic) water bottle when you travel. The average person in the United States drinks 8 oz. of bottled water per day (how did that ever happen??). It takes 1.5 million barrels of oil to annually satisfy America’s demand for bottled water (the bottles for which are derived from petroleum). If that oil were converted to gasoline, the total could fuel 500,000 station wagons to take their families on coast-to-coast road trips. Considering the ongoing and unspeakable tragedy in the Gulf, we need to do whatever we can to reduce this country’s insatiable appetite for petroleum. And drinking from a reusable bottle is an easy way to start.

Let me know if you have any favorite eco-friendly travel tips – I’d love to hear them! Happy trails!

Now that summer is officially here, I thought I’d post this for those of you who haven’t seen it – it’s EWG’s 2010 Sunscreen Guide. This is a great resource for helping you to select a sunscreen, including a list of their top picks. There is even a list of sunscreens that don’t use physical blockers (like titanium dioxide and zinc oxide) – but they make it clear that there are trade-offs to using those products, namely that “all non-mineral products contain at least one sunscreen chemical considered to be a potential hormone disruptor, and many offer only moderate or weak UVA protection.”

In addition to recommending sunscreens, EWG also has a very interesting perspective about the “surprising facts about sunscreen”. In this, they not only highlight the Vitamin A issue I mentioned in a previous post More Concerns About Sunscreen, but they also mention controversy about the impact of sunscreen:

“Some researchers have detected an increased risk of melanoma among sunscreen users. No one knows the cause, but scientists speculate that sunscreen users stay out in the sun longer and absorb more radiation overall, or that free radicals released as sunscreen chemicals break down in sunlight may play a role. One other hunch: Inferior sunscreens with poor UVA protection that have dominated the market for 30 years may have led to this surprising outcome. All major public health agencies still advise using sunscreens, but they also stress the importance of shade, clothing and timing.”

Now I am certainly not one to suggest that anyone SKIP sunscreen – we go through gallons of it here at our house – you have to believe that overall it’s better to use it than not use it. But it does make you think. And when it comes to choosing and using a sunscreen, you have to do what works for you and your family. If you just can’t deal with the white-factor of the zinc and titanium dioxide based products, then clearly you should choose one of the safer chemically-based sunblocks vs. not using any sunscreen or using it only intermittently. And you should always be mindful of being out in the sun too long – regardless of whether you have been diligent about sunscreen.

As I mentioned previously, my newest favorite is the Caribbean Sol sunscreen (pictured) – which is included on the EWG list. I also heard from a Garden Girl customer this week about another one that she loves, that’s on the list as well – “thinkbaby” and “thinksport”.  Check the list out and see what works best for you – and let me know if you find one that you love!

Well I finally just did it. I joined a CSA. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture and it’s a great way for local farm to get support and funding. And it’s an amazing way to eat fresh, high quality produce grown locally.

The CSA that I joined is brand new, and if you’re local and looking to join one last minute (like I did!) – they are still accepting members – and will prorate their fee for the weeks you have missed. The farm is The Dover Farm in Dover, MA. It’s run by a great guy name Bryan Austin. And they just added a Brookline pickup for those of you in Brookline/JP.Definitely give them a call (or an email) and check them out!

I am actually splitting the share with a friend, who is also doing it for the first time. I was a little afraid of getting in over my head with too many vegetables and having stuff go to waste – so splitting the share is perfect.  I’m really looking forward to seeing what we get each week. The first week we had:

Turnips
Radishes
Red Russian Kale
Spinach
Lettuce
Swiss Chard
Garlic Scapes
and Dandelion Greens

I’ll be honest. The dandelion greens were not my favorite. I spoke with a friend who is a chef (at La Morra in Brookline - a fantastic restaurant, by the way). He said slicing them thinly and adding a vinegary vinaigrette is a great way to eat them. I still couldn’t quite handle them. I threw a few into my sauteed spinach/kale/swiss chard and they were OK but otherwise, I think I haven’t acquired a taste for them.

But all the rest has been amazing. Love the garlic scapes – I’d never used them before. Fun! And it’s great to know that I’m supporting a farm AND eating incredible, pesticide free, organic produce. Can’t wait to see what this week brings!

Ok – I don’t know about you, but I for one would really like it if we could just feel safe and good about using sunscreen. But it seems that every few months there’s something new to worry about. And now there’s the newest – there are concerns about retinyl palmitate (RP) – a common additive in sunscreens.

Retinyl palmitate is a type of Vitamin A that is used in many skin creams. (Note: it is not in any Garden Girl products). It is somewhat similar to Retinol but it is weaker.  And according to a report on Reuters this week:

“The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been reviewing data from several studies on a potential link between retinyl palmitate (RP), a common sunscreen additive and cases of skin cancer, since July 2009, but has yet to issue any rulings or guidelines, Senator Charles Schumer said.”

The study they refer to found that “tumors and lesions developed up to 21 percent faster in lab animals coated in retinyl palmitate-laced cream than animals treated with a cream that did not contain RP.”

So again, could be hype. But sounds like something that even the FDA is taking note of and investigating. So my advice is try to avoid it. And yes, I find it frustrating and depressing.  Making it even worse is that my favorite of the “not so bad” sunscreens (Trader Joe’s Face & Body Sunscreen) has the dreaded Retinyl Palmitate. Sigh.

Now my best recommendation is the sunscreen I discovered via a suggestion from a Garden Girl customer – Caribbean Sol. Check it out. It’s natural, biodegradable, eco-safe and reef-friendly! There aren’t any parabens, and they use Titanium Dioxide and Zinc Oxide. Still takes a little effort to get it rubbed in, but it’s better than Blue Lizard Baby. Plus the ingredients are MUCH better than the Blue Lizard products. And not only that, they do say it’s water resistant as well. You can but it online at www.caribbean-sol.com and it’s also sold in most Whole Foods markets. Let me know if you like it – I’m thinking of selling it next year!

When I was at Kohl’s of all places, I grabbed the book called “The Green Book”. I know – how did they POSSIBLY come up with such a clever title?? Anyway – I figured it would be a fun and helpful book to have around. It’s listed as “the everyday guide to saving the planet one simple step at a time.”

So I started reading it bits at a time. It’s an easy book to just pick up and read for a few minutes – check out a few tips. And while I’ll say I don’t think all of the tips are necessarily 100% thought through (don’t consider the total environmental impact) and they are certainly simplified, it is still overall a pretty good and handy and thorough list of tips and tricks. It’s broken down by subject, and even some of the more “obvious” tips still offer a tidbit of something new/interesting (see the Farmer’s Market tip below).

The other thing that I like about the book is it has a very extensive reference list at the end of the book. The sources are well-known, recognizable and credible.

I thought I’d share a few tips and then continue to periodically post others that I find interesting. For now, I’ll focus on food shopping tips:

“Farmer’s Market vs. Supermarket

Try doing some of your shopping at a local farmer’s market. And if you can, walk or bike there. Of the total energy used in the United States per year, 4 percent is used to produce food, and between 10 and 13 percent is used to transport it. On average, U.S. supermarket food travels 1,500 to 2,500 miles before it reaches the family table. Buying local food can reduce the amount of petroleum consumed to transport your dinner by as much as 95 percent.

Meat

If you have the option, choose your meat at the butcher counter and purchase only as much as you know you’ll use. You’ll reduce food waste, save money, and conserve resources. The average person wastes over twenty-two pounds of edible store-bought meat each year. Given that it takes five pounds of grain and 2,500 gallons of water to make one pound of beef, that’s more than one hundred pounds of wasted grain and 55,000 gallons of wasted water per person! If all households decreased their beef purchases by just one pound per year, 250 billion gallons of water would be saved. It would take five days for this amount of water to pour over Niagara Falls.

Organic

You can lower your exposure to pesticides by 90 percent just by choosing organic varieties of certain fruits and vegetables. If just 1 percent of the nation’s farmlands converted to organic (non-chemical) agricultural systems, it would remove twenty-six million pounds of pesticides per year from the food we eat and from the environment. If you buy organic, you’ll encourage this type of farming.”

As I said, some of the tips – like the ones I highlighted here – are ones you have probably heard before. But they are able to add a new twist to make you think even more about making the change. And most are fairly simple changes. I will offer more of their green ideas in a future post, so stay tuned! And if you are interested in getting your own copy, just click on the book picture above and it will take you to the Amazon.com page.

Let me start by saying, wow – I wish I had these swaddle wraps when my boys were born. A few weeks ago, the people at Aden + Anais sent me a certified organic Swaddle wrap in this adorable Star pattern to check out and it’s just gorgeous. Really.

The wrap is made of muslin – it’s soft and lightweight. It feels great on your skin, so baby will feel comfortable. And each wrap comes with a little card that shows how to swaddle. But I have to say – the blanket is great for other uses as well. I know I would have loved to use it for when I was nursing – a nice cover-up that would be light and breezy for the baby.Plus it would be perfect for the beach or picnics for the baby to lie on.

You may be wondering why you would want to swaddle specifically with muslin, and the site does a great job of explaining it as well as telling a little history about swaddling. They also mention recent studies:

In 2002, the medical journal Pediatrics published a study that explained why babies who are swaddled sleep more peacefully by preventing spontaneous movements (called reflex motion) from waking them up continually during the night. The same year, the Journal of Applied Physiology wrote that swaddled infants stay in REM sleep (the most restorative, deepest sleep) longer than those who were not. There is growing evidence every year that swaddling may indirectly help prevent SIDS, as well.

The site www.adenandanais.com has all kinds of swaddling blankets in different styles and colors. They range from organic (like the one I have – even printed with low eco-impact prints) to bamboo to “classic”. These really do make a great baby gift – especially paired with Garden Baby Little Lamb lotion and Rub a Dub baby wash + shampoo! (I know, shameless plug!)

So here’s the best part! I am going to give away the one I got to a lucky winner! But that’s not all – you’ll also get a Garden Baby Rub a Dub baby wash + shampoo for your little one. No little one to share this with? It would make a perfect gift – so why not give it a go?

All you need to do to enter is comment on this posting and let me know why you want to win. The winner will be chosen on Saturday, June 12. I will post the winner here. Good luck!

(Full disclosure – I did unroll the blanket to look at it so while it wasn’t used, it doesn’t look as neatly rolled up as it does in the picture!)