Why? Because the majority of cut flowers are grown in Latin America and equatorial Africa in an industry in which the employees (mostly women) work for low wages and without benefits. When the holidays roll around and flowers are in demand, the workers are required to labor overtime.

The flowers themselves are grown in greenhouses or under broad tents –- not to keep weather or insects out, but to keep pesticides in. Growers in other countries frequently use pesticides banned in the U.S. Heavy application of pesticides in confined areas has significant impacts on both the environment and workers. The chemicals get on workers’ clothes, in their skin and lungs, and are carried out of the greenhouses to their homes. Pesticides also contaminate the soil and seep into water supplies. Studies in Costa Rica have indicated that 50% of floriculture workers show symptoms of pesticide poisoning, and rates of miscarriage and birth defects are higher in areas surrounding flower farms.

Certified organic flowers are grown without the use of dangerous pesticides –- making a safer environment for floriculture workers, their families, and their homes. Fair Trade flowers are grown by workers who are paid a more reasonable salary than otherwise.

Where can you get organic and Fair Trade flowers? Check with your local florist to see what they carry. Also, try your local organic grocery store.

If you are sending flowers to your True Love from afar, try one of these online florists:  Organic Style and California Organic Flowers.

Tell the Eco Women: What’s your favorite flower to receive for Valentine’s Day or another time?

We’ve all been there–stinky situations abound in houses where food rots, kids vomit and drains plug up. Before you head out to buy dangerous toxic chemical fixes like Febreze or Glade Plug-Ins, check your pantry for these items that will naturally purify the air AND not pollute the environment:

* Equal parts distilled white vinegar and water will clean any carpets and fabrics, leaving them smelling like nothing at all once dried. Use this for pet stains, people stains, food stains and mystery stains.
* Bowls of vinegar set around a house will absorb any odors, including cigarette smoke, by the next morning.
* Baking soda sprinkled in a drain or in a garbage will take out the stink.  So will grinding up a chunk of lemon or lime in your garbage disposal.
* A box of baking soda will eliminate fridge odors–just keep another box in your pantry for baking needs.
* An old sock stuffed with coffee beans will keep coolers and freezers smelling fresh whether in use or in storage.
* Stuff shoes with newspaper to absorb odors and moisture when you’re storing them for any length of time.
* Chewing parsley will help fend off bad breath (on you, not on others!).

Each of these items cost less than a dollar, so they’re easy on both your budget and our planet.

It’s important to note that clean surfaces don’t carry odor, as in Enviro Girl’s kitchen, once she took out the trash and wiped out the inside of her garbage bin, that nasty kitchen smell was nothing but a bad memory.  You can layer good smells over bad–burn candles, spray air fresheners, sprinkle potpourri–but if you address the cause, you won’t have to sweat the smells.

So, here’s one way to reuse the top portion of a worn out swimsuit and make a fun to fill card or gift holder.

Simply cut away the reuseable fabric, then cut it into heart shapes and weave together. Simply fill the heart with a box of candy, a special note, a hand-made coupon or whatever your little heart desires and wah-lah! Valentine’s gift for your loved one(s). Of course you’ve got to add a handle or two.

You can also use paper or felt and they are simple to weave.

So before you throw out that worn out shirt, pants, or even a swimsuit, think . . . is there anything else I could do with this? You just might come up with a wonderful way to share the sustainable love.

Today, Recycla is here to talk about CHOCOLATE.

Chocolate is a big part of Valentine’s Day and for good reason.  This product of the cocoa bean has been revered for centuries for its aphrodisiac qualities.  And isn’t love what Valentine’s Day is all about?

So don’t just go to the store and buy your True Love a heart-shaped box of generic candy — get something special.

But what’s good enough for your True Love?

Does your hometown have a local gourmet chocolate shop?  Shop local!   Recycla is lucky enough to have a couple of amazing gourmet chocolate shops in her town.  They use the freshest ingredients and make their chocolates by hand, one at a time

If you don’t have a gourmet chocolate shop in your town, search for organic and Fair Trade options. Why? Organic chocolate keeps pesticides and chemical fertilizers out of the cocoa beans, promoting a safer and healthier Planet Earth. Lots of organic chocolate is Fair Trade — opt for this and you’ll help ensure livable wages for farmers in developing nations.

Two of Recycla’s favorites are Vosges Chocolate and Lake Champlain Chocolates. These are high quality chocolates that she and her family savor slowly, enjoying each bite. Unlike cheap chocolates that don’t satisfy and make you want more, good quality dark chocolate satisfies after just a bite or two.

Luckily, it is getting easier to find organic and Fair Trade chocolates. Unlike just five or so years ago, you no longer have to shop at organic or gourmet stores or online. Now, you can find organic and Fair Trade at conventional grocery stores, Target, and sometimes even in convenience stores.

Tell the Eco Women: What is your favorite chocolate?

Disclaimer: The Eco Women are no employed by the companies mentioned, nor were they paid to endorse these products. Photo credits: Vosges Chocolates, Lake Champlain Chocolates.

1)  Gift certificate for a spa treatment–pamper her with a facial, massage, manicure or pedicure.

2)  Concert tickets–music is the food of love, you know.

3)  Tickets to a sporting event–nothing like a little competition to get those juices flowing.

4)  Dinner at a restaurant–a nice meal she doesn’t have to shop for, prepare or clean up afterward. Bonus points if the restaurant doesn’t have a TV, kids menu or waitstaff wearing suspenders.

5)  Theater tickets–really, any excuse to get dressed up and go out puts a girl in the mood.

6)  A nice bottle of wine can lubricate the mood just fine.

7)  Tell you what, honey, you arrange for a babysitter and plan a night out–whether it’s bowling, a movie, hiking at a state park or sitting in a bar eating peanuts and drinking tap beer, the fact that you’d make the effort to spend quality time together speaks volumes.
Tell the Eco Women, ladies.  What’s the Valentine’s Day gift that fills you with passion?

First, it’s important to recognize that while the Valentine’s Day card is NECESSARY, it’s really only a vehicle for getting an attached treat. To that end, if you’re crafty, you can reuse scrap supplies like construction paper, CDs, yarn, fabric and have your kiddos make their own. Family Fun Magazine and many other web sites abound with cool card ideas that use up supplies already in your cabinet. Something as simple as a sucker with twin paper hearts attached as wings can pass for a butterfly card with a message like, “You make my heart aflutter, Valentine.” Basic, cheap, and definitely NOT over the top.

However, if you’re like Enviro-Girl and have all boy children who don’t care to hand-craft 25 cards for their classmates, you’ll buy a box or two of character cards for a couple of dollars and have your kids sign their names. But you still have to attach a treat–or your kid will be a classroom pariah.

One option is to set aside Halloween candy in an airtight container to repurpose for those Valentines.  Enviro Girl has taken her sons’ Halloween suckers, Sweet Tarts and Bottle Caps to tape to their classmates’ Valentines a few months later.  She recommends these candies because they won’t spoil in your pantry; chocolate candy does not have the same staying power.

But does your child have to give candy to their classmates? Shelling out for fair trade organic candy bars for classrooms of 30 students can get expensive, and while that’s the most eco-friendly option, you can substitute all kinds of other items for a treat. Temporary tattoos, stickers, pencils, play dough, erasers or little notepads are all fun ideas–but they still fall under Enviro-Girl’s category of “Plastic Crappe.” She’d really rather find 25 Dum Dum suckers in her kids’ backpacks over 25 little toys and trinkets.  Your local organic food store will sell all sorts of “healthy” candy treats you can tape to Valentines. OR, instead of candy, perhaps individually wrapped string cheese, fruit leather, granola bars, pretzels, bags of popcorn or crackers can get taped to those classroom cards.  If it’s got to be candy, a Dum Dum sucker is small and probably the least harmful to a fair trade economy and uses minimal packaging–mostly made of paper. It’s the economical choice of candy, won’t contribute woefully to a child’s health since they’re only 25 calories each and fat-free, and they’re made in the USA–in Ohio!

Additionally, Dum Dum suckers will not cause allergic reactions–a huge concern for many children these days.  For a few bucks you can snag a bag of Dum Dum suckers and a box of cards printed on recycled paper.  This won’t break your bank, gives your child a socially acceptable Valentine’s Day treat to pass out to their classmates and leaves a carbon footprint of minor proportions.

Bottom line: if you can get your kid to make their own cards out of recycled materials and attach a whole grain granola bar to it, you’re an Eco Warrior with Super Powers. Keep the candy or treats to a minimum–one per classmate is plenty.  But if this battle isn’t worth it, buy a bag of Dum Dums and a box of Phineas and Ferb Valentines and save your super powers for the next fight.

One such company the Green Queen likes to tell people about is Burgerville USA. This company composts, recycles and buys its produce and meat locally. It also pays 95% of its employees’ healthcare premiums. And considering that this is a “fast-food” company, I like to support these business practices by eating at Burgerville when I run out of time and need to feed my family fast.

I’d rather spend an extra dollar to keep companies buying products locally, which helps keep my community vital and thriving. I’m also willing to spend a little bit more on a company that treats it’s employees well. That companies’ employees are also my neighbors.

I want to help sustain jobs in my own community. So, why wouldn’t I eat here? It simply makes sense…sustainable sense.

So, the next time you’re thinking of eating out…put your money where your MOUTH is. Promote companies that buy locally grown and raised produce and products and remember to check out the companies in your own neighborhood before you run out of time and need to eat in a hurry. That way, you’ll be ready to make the right choice.

So far, she has completely worked over her closet, just recently shoveled out her daughters’ toy room, and is plunging into the kitchen today, to be followed afterward by dealing with the mountain of papers in the family’s shared home office.

Recycla knows she’s not alone in this desire for order. In recent weeks, she has seen a number of articles and blog posts about decluttering, including this one about throwing out 50 things. According to the author, getting rid of 50 things will not only free up your home, but it will also free up your mind, plus it will be easier to be more organized simply by having less stuff. This is an interesting concept and Recycla agrees, although she thinks that rather than throwing out 50 things, it would be better to get rid of 50 things via donations, Craigslist, Freecycle, recycling, and the like. Only throw away those things that truly cannot be reused or repurposed or recycled.

50 things might seem like a lot, but you don’t have to do it all at once. Find a few items in your kitchen and pantry, find other stuff in your bathroom, and then a few other things in your closet, and so on. Eventually, all those “few other things” will add up and you’ll hit 50.

Recycla feels so much better — more free, really — by having fewer things in her house and by keeping things tidy and organized. She really does feel calmer and more balanced when everything is in place.

If you are interested in clearing your life of clutter, but don’t know quite where to start, you might want to consider visiting Kanelstrand’s blog and taking her Simple Living Challenge, which starts next week on February 1st. The challenge aims to help all participants take the first steps to a simpler, more meaningful life. For three weeks Sonya will post tips, ideas, and her own personal challenges.

Years ago, people drained, dredged, filled in and built over millions of acres of wetlands across America.  Wetlands were not valued for their biodiversity or for their role in keeping water systems healthy.  They were seen as cheap property that could become valuable once filled in.  The most famous example of wetland development occurred in central Florida:

Disney knew the importance of getting as much land as possible and was well aware of how prices would escalate if people found out what he was doing…  By the time Disney announced the project on November 15, 1965, the company had acquired 27,443 acres (43 square miles) for $5 million. (This has expanded over the years to more than 30,000 acres, or almost 47 square miles). As Disney predicted, within days of this announcement land values for property surrounding the Disney site sky-rocketed from $180 per acre to as much as $80,000 per acre.

The 1972 federal Clean Water Act changed the scene for wetland development as it included language protecting designated wetland areas and forcing people to avoid building on designated wetland areas.  If it’s impossible to avoid development on a wetland, “Wetland Mitigation” allows for development if an equal or greater amount of wetland elsewhere is restored or enhanced.  “Wetland Credit,” if you will.

Recently Enviro Girl got a very tedious and long letter outlining a wetland mitigation project on property adjacent to her family’s property.  Because of an interstate highway project, 17 acres of wetland will be paved over in order to accommodate traffic through Green Bay, Wisconsin.  This wetland is part of the Duck Creek watershed.  To compensate for the 17 acres of wetland being removed, approximately 60 acres of land adjacent to Duck Creek some 20 miles east of the highway project will become restored wetland.  This means the farmer who owns those fields had to remove all the drain tile and pumps currently moving water off of those 60 acres.  Various federal, state and county dollars will restore the former wetland area, including bringing in fill to create a berm around the designated area and plant it with native species.

One one hand, Enviro Girl is happy because:

*  Triple the amount of wetland being developed will be restored.

* Flooding, which has become a huge problem in recent years, will be reduced in her immediate area–60 acres will retain and filter an awful lot of water that previously got channeled into Duck Creek.

*  Water pollution will be reduced because the drain tile and pumps forced Duck Creek full of water toxic with agricultural pollution run off.

* Wildlife will find more habitat and what was formerly a cornfield will now become a diverse ecosystem, adding beauty and interest to the area.

On the other hand, Enviro Girl knows that wetlands exist in the lowest-lying areas for a reason–all water systems must recycle and replenish themselves and whenever human development messes with water systems, problems occur.  You need look no further than the damage caused by recent hurricane storm surges.  Coastal wetlands absorb the damage and protect inland areas.  The gain of 60 wetland acres in her back yard is great, but who knows what the loss of 17 acres further along the Duck Creek watershed will bring.

While this wetland mitigation project is under way, so is proposed legislation that would weaken wetland protection laws in Wisconsin.  The general argument is that property owners should have more say–if they want to develop property, that should be their right.  The proposed legislation would make it easier for property owners to develop their land as they wish and more easily apply “wetland mitigation” standards to compensate for their development. On one hand, Enviro Girl appreciates people’s desire to profit off of their real estate investments.   On the other hand, if everyone developed land as they pleased, she suspects we’d be surrounded by vacant strip malls, uninhabited housing developments and acres of asphalt pavement because human nature is to make a fast buck, not restore and retain wildlife and habitat for generations.  It’s no coincidence that legislature eroding Smart Growth in her state has also been recently proposed.

Realtors and other proponents of “economic growth” love to undermine efforts to protect land from development.  Yet Enviro Girl can easily point out plenty of available land currently zoned “industrial,” “residential,” and “commercial” that adequately meet the needs of a growing economy without contributing to water pollution or urban sprawl.  Economic development can take place without adding undue stress to our environment, but that often means property owners lose their “right” to do what they want with what they own.  Enviro Girl does not know a simple solution to this problem, but she does understand that everyone’s tax dollars pay to clean up pollution caused by a small percentage of the population who tend to profit the most.  One solution is to reassess property values and create incentives to reduce urban sprawl.  Taking the long view of Wetland Mitigation and Smart Growth legislation in Wisconsin means accounting for the cost of unchecked development and pollution–a cost that everyone ends up paying for.

Ahhhhhh…

A bowl of oatmeal is a warm, nutritious breakfast that tastes good and gives any Eco Warrior enough energy to battle even the most dastardly Hummer owner.

When Recycla says oatmeal, she doesn’t mean one of those single serving packets of oats, sugar, and artificial ingredients.  Oh no.  Oatmeal in Recycla’s home comes in an 18 ounce cardboard container so that there’s less packaging waste and the cardboard can be recycled later. (She uses the plastic lids as plant coasters.)  And why buy something that’s flavored already when you can so easily add your own special ingredients, such as fresh or dried fruit, nuts, and any number of spices?

Recycla’s personal favorite is to cook her oatmeal with skim milk and then mix in raisins, cinnamon, and some of her homemade applesauce.  Yum! Alternately, she stirs in some of  the cherries she froze last summer, a teaspoon of flaxseeds, and a tiny dollop of honey.  Delish.  Last fall, she went with a couple of tablespoons of pumpkin puree, a sprinkling of pumpkin seeds, and a tiny drizzle of maple syrup. Divine.

Oatmeal has a number of health benefits, including the ability to lower one’s cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease.  Even better, quick oats take only a minute to prepare in the microwave.  Best of all, oatmeal is inexpensive, so Eco Warriors don’t need to spend a lot of money on a breakfast that has staying power and will stick with them all morning. Recycla is a runner in training for a half marathon later this year. She eats a bowl of oatmeal before setting off on long runs of 6, 7, 8, or more miles.

Some weekend morning, when you have more time to dally over breakfast, Recycla suggests you try steel-cut oats (a.k.a. Irish oatmeal).  Irish oatmeal takes about 20-30 minutes to cook, but the result is a chunkier, nuttier, more flavorful oatmeal that will keep you full for hours.  Stir in some dates, maybe some walnuts, and enjoy. Alternately, if you have crockpot, whip up a batch before you go to bed at night and enjoy the results the next morning.

What about you Eco Warriors?  How do you like your oatmeal?