Living Large In Our Little House

Chez Sven B&B

Today, I'm pleased once again to have Alexandra Grabbe as a guest poster. She runs the Chezsven Bed and Breakfast in Wellfleet, Mass., a green B&B and I'm proud to say is also a reg­u­lar com­mu­nity mem­ber here at Living Large in Our Little House:

I run a green B&B and am very for­tu­nate to have lots of guests who care about the envi­ron­ment.  Why for­tu­nate?  We often pool our knowledge. I tell all my guests about Slow Death by Rubber Duck, whose authors set out to prove body bur­den exists.  The book made me under­stand what con­sumer prod­ucts to avoid, and why.  Today Kerri asked me to share a few tips on how to elim­i­nate toxic chem­i­cals from our lives, a timely topic what with oil gush­ing from the bro­ken well in the Gulf of Mexico, and so very impor­tant as the Safe Chemicals Act comes before Congress.  Toxic chem­i­cals are every­where: in the air, in water, in the con­sumer prod­ucts we use and the food we eat.  Installing a fil­ter will bring imme­di­ate improve­ment in the qual­ity of your water.  If you can­not afford the expen­sive type of fil­ter, go with a sim­ple PUR or Brita.  Unfortunately the instal­la­tion of a fil­ter will not be enough to pro­tect you from all the syn­thetic chem­i­cals that are now float­ing around in our environment.

Here’s how to fight back:

1)    Become bet­ter informed. Remember infor­ma­tion is power.  Read Slow Death by Rubber Duck.  Share what you know with oth­ers.  Today, over break­fast, I was talk­ing to a forty-something mother of two from Montreal, Canada.  She told me how her coun­try­men had been encour­aged to stop eat­ing wild fish, due to the plas­tic they now con­sume and the high lev­els of mer­cury.  Farm-raised fish were pro­posed as an alter­na­tive, one Canadians embraced.  Now, ten years later, the chil­dren of Canada are fat­ter than in pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions.  Their moth­ers have real­ized farmed fish are chicken-fed. The chick­ens con­sume growth hormones.

2)    Learn to speak out and encour­age green ini­tia­tives locally.  Suggest a shift to herbicide-free lawns.  If your town does not recy­cle, point to cities like Seattle, and ask why.  (This year recy­cling bins were placed on the pier here in Wellfleet. This was a great start.  But, today a guest asked why there were no recy­cling bins in the vil­lage cen­ter.  I intend to find out and make sure next sum­mer the recy­cling bin ini­tia­tive is extended to all areas tourists frequent.)

3)    Teach chil­dren to see beyond com­mer­cials.  In the 1970s, my kids lis­tened to the record Free to Be You and Me.  One of the songs explained how house­wives on TV look happy because they are actresses, paid to say how much they love the deter­gent or cleaner or yucky cereal that turns out to con­tain toxic substances.

4)    Read labels of clean­ing prod­ucts, food, and cos­met­ics.  Know which ingre­di­ents are bad for you. Eat as organic as pos­si­ble. Be con­scious of what you are putting in your body and on your skin.  The Environmental Working Group has a great data­base to help fig­ure out cosmetics.

Finally, do your darnedest to get the Safe Chemicals Act passed.  Let your leg­is­la­tors know you really care about the envi­ron­ment, that you want it to be more than a talk­ing point in their plat­form.  Support groups like EWG and Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families. Toxic chem­i­cals are unreg­u­lated and cor­po­ra­tions are get­ting away with mur­der.  Let’s make them stop!

What have you done to elim­i­nate chem­i­cals from your life?

Living Large Readers: Next week, I will be run­ning some fresh from the gar­den recipes. If you have any spe­cial recipes to share, please send them to me at fivecoat@​ozarkmountains.​com by this Thursday, 7/29!