Green Giant

Some very interesting green initiatives by my fave love to hate big box behemoth - Wal-Mart. As any of you who know me probably know, I grew up in a Canadian retail family and therefore have a big hate-on for Wally World as we fondly call it. I have many issues with their employee policies around triple-split shifts, inadequate pay and their shady PR practices. I also think they are largely responsible for pushing this "lower price" mentality on people to the point where everyone would gladly drive farther to save nine cents on whatever cheap product it is they want...only to be hugely disapointed when they discover how poorly the product is made to get it to them at that 'great' price or what it's driving those suppliers to do to stay afloat. I also have issues with Wal-Mart coming into small towns and putting all the other small mom and pop shops out of business only to close up and leave town. I have issues with them also bullying employees/stores where unions are trying to be formed to protect worker's rights. I do not shop at Wal-Mart, and haven't for years, because of this and much more.


However, I have to admit that they carry a lot of weight. Wal-Mart is the largest retailer in the world and have a lot of buying power and influence. Take a moment to read this article on Wal-Mart's greening efforts. They've realized that there are financial benefits to going green. I'm not sure I'm ready to drop my boycott and start shopping there yet, but at least they're heading in the right direction, and hopefully setting a green path for other retailers to follow.

Good News and Bad News from Starbucks

To be honest, I don't know how applicable this is in Canada, as I was under the impression that Canadian cows do not get these hormones, but I made need to brush up on my homework. The story here discusses Starbucks move to hormone-free milk (yay!) but how this means they will also not sell organic milk anymore (boo!).

How about we just stick to Bridgehead instead?

Roll Up Your Sleeves, America!

http://www.relocalize.net/u_s_oil_dependencies


By the wonderful Art Spiegelman

Environ-mental

Great article here about a book on greening your life, without the depressing serious 'tude.

Excerpt from the article:

And if if you think you're pretty eco-conscious already, there is still some fun facts to learn. Here's some of my favorites:

• "Some 20 billion diapers are buried in US landfills per year, representing about 7 billion pounds of garbage."
• You can flush dog poop down the toilet but not cat poop (and ironically, it seems you can potty train cats, but not dogs -- drat!).
• "There is a Green Wi-Fi project, which has developed a solar-powered wireless router that can run for up to four weeks even in prolonged periods of gray skies."
• Burning a single gallon of gas produces 20 pounds of C02.
• Lunch boxes are hipper than tupperware.
• "Americans are said to throw away enough aluminum in three months to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet."
• "The average dishwasher uses about 15 gallons of water per load, while the average dish-washer (that would be you) uses about 5 gallons of water per minute at the sink.
• The US airline industry uses 53 million gallons of jet fuel each day.

I don't see it on the Octopus Book website yet, but Chapters and Amazon have it if your local indie book store doesn't.

Guess who's back?

So....I'm back.

I stopped posting here seriously almost a year ago. I blame facebook. I'd just post up links, funny stories and the occasional comment so easily to facebook, that I figured there was no point in repeating it here, as I think most people who read this are people I know. However, I still have been getting statistic reports every week and it boggles my mind that there are still (a few) people who just stumble onto the site. Also, I come across so many interesting articles etc. that I want to share, that I inundate my "friends" on facebook and lose most of the posts as the page only fits so many entries.

So, Stealing Happy Hours is back. I'm sure I should reorganize it somehow...but for now it's going to remain the melange of articles and interesting links and occasional comments on everything from eco-friendliness, to travel, to shopping, to music, to activism, to politics, to humour, to books, to food and photos.

Please send me any comments or suggestions!