O Canada!

It has been a pleasant visit to New Westminster, a city that is part of Greater Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada. Even more pleasant were the green efforts in this part of the Northwest that are evident in many ways.


The first thing we noticed were the three separate boxes in our daughter's home that she and her husband diligently filled. Three? The local government mandates that paper, glass and other recyclables be separated so that they can be collected and sold more easily.


Yes, sold. This stuff doesn't go into a landfill. There are companies that derive profit from chewing up this junk and producing saleable materials. So what do many municipalities in the USA do? They charge homeowners for placing this material on the curb. Advice? Check on how your municipal garbage collection is handled and then raise hell about any governmental stupidity that is detected. By the way, residents here are not charged for this service. Why should they, when the city benefits financially. A definite win-win.


Here are a few other things that help save the environment and some bucks as well.


Do you have a fireplace? Have you heard of Ecologs? These are made from compressed hardwood waste with no glue or wax used to bind them. So, when used in a fireplace they burn clean without any buildup in the chimney. Save the forest that sucks up the CO2. Don't use logs but get these Ecologs instead.


The winter will be coming on soon enough in the northern reaches of the USA where I'm located. What do we do when the cold winds blow? We shut our windows and turn up the thermostat, thereby turning our indoors into a biological hazard zone. Our carpets and cleaning agents give off enough poisonous vapors to land some of us in the hospital! Unless, that is, we use some things available to stop that contamination. Heard of HEPA filters? Some of the better vacuum cleaners use them to take out the fine particles that ordinary filters pass right on through. There are filters available at your nearby hardware store that stop these particles from your furnace or air handler especially with HEPA.

Is the summer hot and humid in your place? Do you use a dehumidifier? Good! You don't? Oh,oh. Mold and mildew make asthmatics out of your kids and sicken you as well. Not only the health of your family is at risk, however. The drywall and wood in your home can be ruined by fungus and mold. Investigate antifungal coatings that can be applied to your interior.

That's enough for now. We have to save the environment from the warming threat. At the same time we should not neglect the environment within our own homes