Guest Post: Edit My Closet

If you're a regular visitor to my blog, you know that I like to figure out the motivation behind people's green actions - or lack thereof - in an attempt to find more effective ways to encourage the public to make the world a better place. It will come as no surprise, then, that I was intrigued by Edit My Closet, a service that helps clients de-clutter their homes by identifying the barriers that stand in the way and reinforcing a simpler, greener attitude about consumption. I asked founders Beth and Cheryl to tell us more in this guest post.

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Beth and Cheryl, the founders of Edit My Closet, have been providing their customers with emotional support while physically assisting in de-cluttering, organizing, and removing no longer needed/wanted items, for over five years. Their background in Social Work enables them to read body language, validate experiences, and be conscious of the emotional charge associated with de-cluttering. Beth and Cheryl both live in Toronto and have sparkling closets.

Dollar stores, leisure time, "I deserve it" upgrades, larger living space, disposable incomes, "just in case" mentality (holding on to things, physically or otherwise, out of fear one will never have access to them again), and shopping as a form of self-medication have all played an integral role in producing the cultural epidemic known as clutter.

Clutter is defined as "a confused or disordered state or collection". It's not difficult to be confused or disordered when we have an abundance of meaningless, useless objects surrounding us. This state can easily lead to feelings of being overwhelmed and out of control. This is why the process of de-cluttering (carving out time to consciously go through your stuff and discard items that are no longer useful) is considered therapeutic.

The process of letting things go and saying goodbye can be a difficult and emotionally charged experience. Our consumption and "holding-on" patterns are brought into awareness as we move through this process. The typical result, however, is one of liberation and clarity, especially when the process is executed in an environmentally conscious and sustainable way.

We provide our customers with five steps to make the de-cluttering process easier:

1. Identify a cluttered space that requires organization. Easy!


2. Establish expectations. Is there a specific vision for the space, i.e. easier access to items hanging in a closet, or wanting a drawer to close? Be clear around the intentions; writing them down helps significantly.


3. Compartmentalize and assess! Empty all of the items from the space and sort them into smaller, categorized piles. For example, when organizing an office you may have a stationery pile, an electronics pile, a decorative pile, etc.


4. Create 3 separate piles labelled Toss, Maybe, and Keep. Baskets or bins can be used in lieu of piles.
   • Go through each item piece by piece and ask: Is this essential? What’s its purpose? Has it been used in the past six months? Could someone else benefit from the item? Taking pictures of items that evoke sentimentality is a great way to "hold on" without compromising storage space.
   • Look at the empty space and think back to your vision. Are you missing anything? Would additional storage solutions help? Are there things in the “Keep” pile that actually belong in another room or area? If yes, where?
   • Further compartmentalize items in the "Toss" pile to Recycle, Donate, Return, and Give-Away piles. Take the time to donate items to shelters, libraries, and second hand stores that rely heavily on donations to serve the community effectively. Donate/recycle as quickly as possible to avoid rooting through the bags and reclaiming items.


5. Clean the area before putting the items back. De-cluttering is the perfect time to pull out the vacuum and make use of all of your favourite natural cleaning products. Miss Charlotte over at Les Bonnes Idees provides a recipe to make your own! Click here to view it.

We'd like to leave you with one last tip: de-cluttering is most often performed in the spring, as it is widely associated (for good reason) with new beginnings. However, we encourage you to try de-cluttering one space per month. Tackling areas in small steps like this is less overwhelming than a big once a year job and will certainly have a big impact over time. Good luck!

For more information about Edit My Closet, please check out our website or contact us at info(at)editmycloset.com.


Photo of cluttered room used under Creative Commons from Christopher Gollmar (flickr).
No clutter logo used under Creative Commons from Sean MacEntee (flickr).
Photo of homemade natural cleaning products used under Creative Commons from Mrs. Green (flickr).

Guest Post: The Buzz on the Street

We've all heard a lot about bees and their declining populations. To help us understand why they're so important and what we can do to boost their numbers, I've been given permission by Tara Mabon, one of this year's farming interns with Young Urban Farmers CSA, to post her bee article here which first appeared in the YUF CSA newsletter a few weeks ago.

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About Tara: Ever since I was a child I've been fascinated with bees. My father used to bring home wild honey comb from his hunting trips and for most of my life there has been a bee hive residing in a dead tree in my garden, which I would spend countless hours watching as a child and proudly showing anyone who wasn't afraid of being stung (not many people shared my enthusiasm). Like many people, however, my head was in the honey bee clouds until I started researching this article. I knew there were other bees out there but I thought that honey bees were, well, the bee's knees. While I still love honey bees (my middle name even means honey bee so I'm pretty sure I have to) I have a new found respect and gratitude for all the work native bees do everywhere, especially now as an intern for YUF CSA, because really they make it all possible.

While the honey bee may reign supreme in the pollinator world in terms of popularity, it is but one of 200 species which can be found in Toronto and only one of 800 that can be found throughout Canada. Even then the honey bee is a welcome visitor having been brought over during European settlement. The huge variety of bees, here and around the world, contributes to 1/3 of all crop pollination, a service valued at over $ 1 billion in Canada alone.

As important as honey bees are, native bees are better suited for pollinating local plants and crops. This is because native bees have evolved alongside native plants and often have specific adaptations that make pollen collection easier for them than for the introduced honey bee. For example, 250 Orchard Mason bees can pollinate 1 acre of apple trees in the time it would take 20,000 honey bees to pollinate the same area! On top of that, native bees are busier bees in general as they are more inclined to work in cold or wet weather conditions where as honey bees tend to sulk inside their hives if the weather is bad.

The diversity of native bees, in Canada, has many benefits. For example, the bees tend to specialize in collecting pollen or nectar from fewer species and therefore will visit and pollinate more flowers than less picky generalist bees. Unlike the honey bee, which is a part of a greater hive and social system, native bees tend to be solitary dwellers, making their own nests and tending their own offspring. The benefit of this is that solitary bees are less aggressive because they don’t have a hive to protect. Unlike the honey bee, which will become aggressive if they feel the hive is threatened.

Similar to the way people value a diversity of crop species, the variety of native bees is valuable in much the same way. With a greater genetic variety native bees are more likely to resist disease and environmental change. This is something which honey bees have less fortunate with.

Like honey bees however, native bees also face an uncertain future. This comes mostly in the form of habitat loss from urban development and pesticide use. While urban centers provide an array of flowers that often rival those found in rural areas, increasingly they are ornamental and are non-native species that provide little benefits to pollinating insects. Ornamental flowers are bred to be big and showy and as a result loose much of their pollen and nectar producing abilities. Along with increasingly vast expanses of grass lawns, the urban garden is increasingly becoming a food desert to bees.

So what can we do to help native bee populations? Like other environmental movements it can start right in your own home.  It can start simply with planting native flowers and shrubs in your own yard or maybe even get your local parks involved! Not only will native plants provide bees with more pollen and nectar but they will help you as a gardener as well. Native plants are more resistant to disease and pests than ornamental exotics because they have evolved alongside these pests. They are also more adapted to the local climate and require less maintenance on your part. Other simple things you can do at home to make your yard more bee friendly is to provide water sources and suitable habitat spaces. It can be as easy as setting up shallow pans of water, leaving some ground bare so that borrowing bees, such as mining bees, can make their nests or building you own bee boxes!

Want to learn more about Native bees? Here are some interesting links that will help you learn more about these helpful and busy pollinators.

Some Info About Native Canadian Bees
http://www.wildaboutgardening.org/en/gardening-for-wildlife/animals/bees
 

A guide to Creating a Bee Friendly Garden
http://www.cwf-fcf.org/en/what-we-do/habitat/gardening-for-wildlife/attracting-wildlife/insects/bees-and-other-pollinators.html
 

A guide to building your own Bee Condo
http://onnaturemagazine.com/how-to-build-a-bee-box.html

Is your garden bee friendly?


Photo of honey bee used under Creative Commons from Rainer Hungershausen (Mamboman1/flickr)
Photo of solitary bee nesting box used under Creative Commons from jon hayes (jon.hayes/flickr)
Photo of native plant garden used under Creative Commons from Bill Barber (bill barber/flickr)

Guest Post: Facts About Japanese Tea in the Wake of the Fukushima Disaster

I recently read what sounded like bad news about Japanese tea and radiation. To help us understand what's going on and separate fact from fearmongering, I've called upon a scientist to explain!

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First, a quick word about who I am: my name is Marc, and I’m a physicist. I’ve been working in the research and development industry for about ten years now, and my work allows me to deal with scientists from a huge array of fields, from astrophysicists to zoologists and everything in between. And, as many scientists before me, I have been horrified by the Fukushima Reactor crisis: not so much the crisis itself, but more so the absolutely shameful job of the media in reporting on the situation. The information they have given the public swings between wildly inaccurate conjecture all the way to outright lying, all designed to sensationalize and horrify without a scrap of truth anywhere to be found. Radiation and radioactive fallout are scary topics, at least in part by how poorly they’re understood, and situations like the media response to Fukushima don’t help matters.

Thankfully, greater minds than mine are devoted to educating the public about the truth of the situation, and those with the intelligence to question the drivel being fed to them can read up on the topic here:

• Nuclear over reaction?
• Why I Still Support Nuclear Power, Even After Fukushima
• Fukushima Q&A

But it is time to add my own small contribution to the voices of reason out there, specifically on the topic of tea. The question as to whether my favourite soothing drink has been transformed into a radiation-laced toxin capable of giving me cancer is one that is close to my heart and probably beneath the notice of other scientists.

A report of the potentially radioactive nature of Japan’s greatest export (besides anime and giant transforming robots) can be found here. The story comments on the fact that ‘higher than normal’ levels of radiation have been found; specifically, 679 becquerel (Bq) per kilogram of tea, which is above the permitted maximum of 500 Bq/kg. For those of you who are not physicists, a Bq is defined as the number of radioactive decays per second, as opposed to cpm (counts per minute), or a Curie (the radioactivity compared to Radium) or Gray (absorbed dose of radiation in tissue), or Sieverts (dose equivalent radiation), or Roentgen (radiation to produce a charge in a unit of blah blah you get the idea). The fact of the matter is that there are dozens of ways to measure radioactivity, and very few people actually understand the way they are all interconnected and related.

But back to the core issue: is this hazardous to people looking to consume green tea? Well, yes and no. Mostly no, though. In fact, overwhelmingly no, but not completely no.

The problem is that radioactive cesium-137 has deposited on the leaves. Unlike most of the radioactive material from the Fukushima fallout, cesium-137 has a long half-life of 30 years (so if there are 20 particles of it left today, in 30 years there will be 10 left, and 30 years after that there will be 5 left, etc...). Most of the radiation reported in the media is either Iodine-131 or radioactive isotopes of water, with half-lives ranging from a few days to a few seconds. The stuff everyone on the West Coast was so scared would be coming over from Japan in the initial days and weeks of the accident was actually less radioactive than standing next to a smoker for a few minutes (smoking generates very low doses of radiation, about 15 mSv/year) by the time it reached the coast. But radioactive cesium is long lasting, so there is some risk that it will still be on the tea when you consume it. But again, is this a risk?

Thankfully, the answer is still mostly no. See, in order for radiation to inflict damage, a bundle of radiation (either a particle or quantum of high energy light) has to smash into something vulnerable, like a strand of your DNA. If it smashes into something that absorbs it harmlessly, then there’s no risk. And it just turns out that water is a great harmless absorber. So when you steep your pot of tea, you’re effectively surrounding any potential radioactive particles with a very healthy measure of shielding, reducing the effectiveness of any radiation by 30 to 40 times!

Furthermore, there is almost no risk that your body will absorb the radioactive cesium, since unlike radioactive iodine, your body doesn’t pick up or use it in any fashion. It’s not stored or used, and so any cesium you swallow is going to be purged back out, harmlessly away from your body.

Now, there is a risk if you happen to enjoy eating dry tea, but I’m pretty sure not many people have a sudden urge to munch on a handful of dried tea leaves. But even that risk is minimal: there is a huge amount of research that points towards the health benefits of slightly higher-than-average doses of radiation, since people in Tibet or other high-altitude areas are already receiving significantly more radiation than people who live near the ocean shore. And to be clear, the ‘standard safe levels of radiation’ listed by most organizations fall way, way below any possible risk level to alleviate the public’s concerns (and lack of understanding) about radiation.

So, at the end of the day, there is very little reason to not sit back and enjoy that cup of Japanese green tea... assuming tea growers manage to convince the Japanese government to let them ship it and tea drinkers ask the Canadian government to accept it.

Will this affect your purchase of tea from Japan? What about other products, like fish?

Photo of Fukushima nuclear power plant used under Creative Commons from Beacon (Beacon Radio/flickr).
Photo of tea plantation used under Creative Commons from ajari (flickr).
Photo of tea set used under Creative Commons from Shigemi J. (pen3ya/flickr).