This is a collection of links to great green gift ideas to start off your holiday season now that it is December and by my books, fair time to start Christmas shopping. I’m not into the consumerism hoopla that is Christmas, but I’m not a grinch, either. The list here is the same as the page on this blog I just created called Green Gifts, found at the top menu bar. As a result, the lists will be for Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanza or whatever holiday you celebrate at this time of year. However, green gifts can be given all year round, though at the caution of consumption. So please, enjoy your holidays responsibly in as many ways as you can!

Minh Tan
Envirostats author
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10 great gifts for the eco child 
It’s a tough job to keep the kids happy and save the planet, but the following should do the trick.
(The Independent)

10 great gifts for the green woman
Racking your brains for something suitably stylish, yet planet-friendly?
(The Independent)

10 great gifts for the green man
A selection of presents to the keep the eco-warrior in your life at the top of his game.
(The Independent)

10 great organic christmas drinks
There’s no reason why you shouldn’t go local or organic with your festive tipples.
(The Independent)

Green Christmas getaways
Let someone else worry about the cooking while you take a break in the lap of eco-luxury.
(The Independent)

Alternative green Christmas activities
activities for nature-lovers where family fun is high on the agenda.
(The Independent)

10 green new year’s resolutions
From buying local to saving water, Laura Smith offers 10 ways to make 2008 an ecologically sound year.
(The Independent)

Environmental Defense Christmas List 
Annual roundup of earth-friendly ideas.
(Environmental Defense)

Today, Sat Nov 24 2007, was Buy Nothing Day (BND) for the world outside of America. America had it yesterday to coincide with Black Friday, one of the biggest, if not the biggest, shopping day there. Symbolically, it is a good idea but I don’t think BND stood a chance against all the sales and marketing hype. It would have had more impact like in the rest of the world if another day was picked where people did not have as much to lose in not purchasing. Nice idea but a little arrogant on behalf of the campaigners.

I inconvenienced my life a little today to buy nothing. No snacks or drinks when I wanted it. No lunch purchase when I was lazy to cook so I went and cooked. No shopping to buy some things I did need in limited Sunday shopping Nova Scotia. However, while at it, I anteed up more because I know I could do better. I started my Christmas early by going through the apartment and picked out some things I could live without, or do live without because I no longer used them, and made three non-plastic shopping bags’ worth of clothing and other household good donations to the Salvation Army.

Maybe someone should start a Giveaway Something Day.

Minh Tan
Envirostats author

Fluoridated — Not fluoridated
(% water volumes, not population living with those water supplies)

AB — 74.6% — 25.4%

MB — 73.2% — 26.8%

ON — 70.3% — 29.7%

NT — 53.8% — 46.2%

NS — 44.8% — 55.2%

SK — 31.7% — 68.3%

PE — 23.4% — 76.6% 

NB — 19.1% — 80.9%

NU — 7.1% — 92.9%

PQ — 6.9% — 93.1%

BC — 3.9% — 96.1%

NL — 3.5% — 96.5%

YK — 0.0% — 100%

Currently, about half of the children in Canada younger than 11 don’t have cavities. That’s great! Half! Wow!

Fluoridation practices vary widely around the world and in Canada. Most of Europe doesn’t fluoridate, and practices vary across the country. There are no national figures to show whether cavity rates differ substantially as a result of fluoridation.

A most fascinating article by Martin Mittelstaedt in the Globe & Mail on help and harms of fluoride in water. It suggests the fluoride in water, thought to help preventing cavities, may not be doing it much but rather more harm in potentially causing a rare form of bone cancer called osteosarcoma in teenage boys, the kind that killed Terry Fox. The argument, without conclusive data though the article was only intended to raise awareness rather than convince from my interpretation, seems to be that drinking and swallowing the fluoride isn’t enough to do prevent cavities but rather allow it to collect in the body where bones absorb it readily and doesn’t react well to it. Very interesting.

I don’t personally know if I’d buy that argument, but as identified in the article, a moderate touch of fluoridation is good. Fluoride is naturally occuring, though not consistently around the world, so it isn’t a man-made concept. However, seems some places like China has lots of fluoride in the water and claims it lowered IQ. I’d trash that if you have any idea what some places in rural China is like for resource disparity to its cities and other regions. You could pinpoint a billion factors as to why the IQ rate fluctuation might be rather correlate it to fluoride. Correlations also does not necessarily mean causality. It could also be something else that happens to be prevalent in those regions. But anyway, fluoridation of water supplies like Toronto does at 0.6 ppm, or somewhere between 0.8-1.0 ppm that Health Canada recommends to be safe is where I’d put it. I only wish I knew what levels the cities and provinces have them in addition to the percentage of fluoridated water listed above.

For more context, consider these things. Some bottled water have fluorine removed, though there has been concern that’s not been good for children’s teeth. Unfortunately, there is no fast way to determine some impacts of fluoridation, I don’t think. But what are some alternatives? You want to risk half the population or so to be getting amalgam fillings (probably much of it mercurial due to cheaper price for them) or dentures and such? I’d say take the moderate solution I suggested above.

I guess my dentist and I are going to have something to talk about next Tue when I think he’s doing a root canal on me… well, he can tell me all about it cause I ain’t gonna be doing much talking.

The article text is below the divider line for interest since the Globe has a subscription wall after several days of making their articles public.

Minh Tan
Envirostats author

- Health Canada and the World Health Organization (WHO), via the Globe & Mail, Nov 23 2007

Article text is below…

Read the rest of this entry »

I was called in with many staff at work today for an impromptu meeting where big news awaited us. At the opening of the Nova Scotian Legislature today, among all the big news from the Throne Speech, one was that the current Department of Environment & Labour would be split into two departments of its components, Environment and Labour, with some other peripheral rearrangements.

The question I always get asked when I worked for Environment & Labour was why the two were together. The general simple and incomplete answer I know of is that most of the Province’s regulations were with the two separate departments so they were combined for regulatory purposes. That is true because the biggest departmental regulatory measures are being undertaken in Environment & Labour in their Competitiveness & Compliance Initiative (CCI). However, the environment as an issue has become so huge that it was inevitable a unique Environment department would have to be had to accommodate things. I don’t know enough about Labour to comment, but they are doing a great job because currently, Halifax has a lower unemployment rate than Toronto (have to compare city to city even though we’re a provincial government). Why are people still moving to Toronto anyway???

I used to work for Environment in Environment & Labour and still have strong ties to it even though I now work for Treasury and Policy Board, a committee of Executive Council. I am housed out of the same building as Environment & Labour right in their CCI quarters. My former departmental colleagues are all around me. Their Deputy is head of the Steering Committee that oversees my work with the Better Regulation Initiative. I maintain a green lifestyle and my continued maintenance of this blog shows my attachment to the topic. For all those reasons, I was ecstatic to hear the news, which also came with notice no jobs would be lost, the first thing that everyone worried about in hearing the news, thinking this was possibly a downsizing. Heck, no! We’re short on resources to do our Environmental work, especially considering we’ve got this Environmental Goals and Sustainable Prosperity Act! Don’t know enough about Labour to comment on workload.

But as any restructuring requires, it will take time. Apr 1 2008, new fiscal year, is slated to be the christening. Can’t wait!

This is going to create a huge debate and is a policy debate on how well it might be enforceable, but I’m going to add this point as to why I like it, as a policy tool and not debating other issues. There is some probably mythical, but probably not too far from the truth, statistic out there that something like 80% of people are law abiding. I agree while the by-law is invasive, and I would hope their police officers don’t devote too much time looking for violators, just having that presence and by-law should affect a whole bunch of people and make a symbolic statement. People with children in their cars can smoke outside town boundaries, which I could run any given day in this town of 3,600, so it’d never be a long wait. It could also increase car emissions from those desperate enough for a cigarette to take a detour outside of the town boundaries on an otherwise shorter trip so this whole thing might not be terribly effective, but I think the benefits will outweigh the costs of a few fewer cigarettes smoked cause two cigarettes in a certain time might come down to one every now and then. But I like the style of social pressure of this by-law and you’ll see why in less than a year!

Of course, it will bring the the smoking debate with children to another level and raise a whole new awareness again.

This commentary is on this blog because why worry about particulate matter and smog if you’re smoking in the car with the kids??? [Envirostats author]

- Sympatico MSN, Nov 20 2007