Act for the planet – Earth day & Earth Hour

Why participate on earth friendly events? Because it is your home, it’s your families, your children, your future children, your dog, your cat, your fish… etcetera we all live on planet earth. Until we are able to live on another planet let’s try to love and appreciate our home.  

 Hope you all took part on earth hour that just recently passed this March 23, 2013. Earth Hour is a worldwide event organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature. To create awareness about the need to take action on climate changes by encouraging households and business to turn off their non-essential lights for one hour.  Since 2008, 35 countries around the world participating as official flagship and over 400 cities are supporting this great cause.

Next earth hour: March 29, 2014 8:30PM

Now what is earth day? Earth day is also a worldwide movement to demonstrate support for the environment protection. Held on April 22 of each year known as International Mother Earth Day. Earth day is celebrated by more than 192 counties and each year there is more eco-activist participating. If each of us could take on just one new, sustainable practice whether changing the light bulbs, turning down (or up) the thermostat, or parking the car and walking just think of the impact. And if we did this every day? Well, what a giant leap toward reducing our collective carbon footprint!

My eco friends please participate on making a difference on earth day April 22, 2013.

http://www.earthhour.org/
http://www.earthday.org/

Get a little more green living

This week we are taking the eco-friendly living to the next level. Furniture ideas that aims to bring your home and lifestyle to a complete ecological responsible. The "organic" designation doesn’t exist in the furniture category in the same way it's used in labeling food and clothing.The first step is to start out  with what’s out there in eco-friendly furniture, décor and furnishings, from organic fabrics and fills to certified ecologically harvested wood, bamboo, nontoxic finishes, fair trade, local, artisan-crafted or reclaimed finds.

Vintage and antique furniture are two of the most eco-friendly choices you can choose for furnishing a home. There’s no hard and fast distinction for when furniture becomes vintage; to some people anything that’s old is vintage. Vintage is very in now-a-days the old is the new new!! I believe the items need to be at least 20 years old to be considered vintage. Refinishing or restoring antiques is also a great choice, but usually best left to the experts. Another great idea is buying from local source; it works as well with furniture as it does with organic food. For great quality and affordable price I would suggest kijiji.com.  Call it salvage-chic or dumpster-chic. Creatively reusing or reimagining everyday objects into completely different things is a great way to come up with furniture and accessories that are truly one-of-a-kind items.

Best of luck my eco-friends on living a greener lifestyle.

http://www.houzz.com/photos/toronto/bamboo-furniture

http://www.organiclifestyle.com/toronto/toronto-based-modern-contemporary-eco-friendly-furniture-designers/

The grass-fed vs. grain-fed beef debate

As I was grocery shopping this weekend I came across some corn fed beef. As you may know this is a very skeptical topic because it goes hand-in-hand with Generically Modify Foods (GMO). I thought to myself Cattle are not design to eat corn!? How would this be healthy to eat? And would this be considered to be GMO?

Well from my research I have found that some people are for it and some against it.

 

Cattle are fed corn for a multitude of reasons. Cattle love eating corn, and prefer eating corn over grass. Corn provides cattle with a means to obtain more energy from their diet which they use to help them grow. Cattle eating strictly grass often cannot obtain enough energy to meet their needs, growth and thus live their lives malnourished. Secondly, cattle are fed corn because feeding corn produces high quality, tender, juicy, and flavorful beef. Grass fed beef often has gamey "off flavours" and substantially less marbling which make the steaks you buy extremely tough when cooked, and can be comparable to eating a piece of leather.  Cattle fed corn have significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions than any form of grass fed program.  Sounds great but just wait the real truth is that cattle were designed to eat grass. The diet is primarily starch based (corn) is about as unnatural as you can get, and is intensely unhealthy for the animal as well as consumers of food products from those animals. Corn has been introduced to the feed to fatten them up faster; hormones and protein supplements. Also, the corn that they are feeding these cattle’s is genetically modified.  I’m sure cattle farmers would argue that without antibiotics and pesticides their cows would get sick in such close quarters and they can’t make a profit by scaling back or allowing cattle to feed in an open pasture.

This  is when we need to vote with our dollars and buy meat that is better for us.

If the demand is there, the industry will adapt and change the supply.

You get to vote for the food you want three times a day.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/03/29/grass.grain.beef.cookinglight/index.html