Ideas for New Eco-Products

More items would be recycled if people could think of creative uses for them. In fact, there used to be an environmental group in the Toronto Annex in which the members would get together to come up with new uses for things they were ready to throw out.

Here is one idea which a friend of mine thought of: Make eco-planting pots out of crushed, organic materials, such as carrot peelings, to grow carrots. A plant would come in the pot, and you would simply set it out in the garden. You would not have to transplant it, because the pot would become the exact kind of nourishment which the plant would need.

Another idea would be to have eco-labels to put on containers which have commercial-looking labels. You would be more likely to recycle the container if you could put a label on it with a nice picture of a flower or bird and an uplifting message. The message could be information about the flower or bird, and people could read the messages and learn about them, for example, at the breakfast table.

The Importance of Cattails

Cattails are a well-known native marsh plant, but their value for both humans and wildlife is less known.

According to the Peterson Guide to Edible Wild Plants, the pollen of cattails is high in protein and can be made into a protein-rich flour. The young shoots and stalks, immature flower spikes, sprouts and rootstocks can all be eaten.

Cattails also provide food for geese and muskrats. They provide shelter and nesting cover for redwing blackbirds.

Cattails can be grown in a backyard pool, in shallow water.

There are many valuable native plants like cattails which can be used as food. Yet, marshes and forests were destroyed by the early settlers for agriculture - to grow non-native plants which took back-breaking labour to cultivate! Had they known the food value of the native plants already there, they could have saved themselves all that trouble - and preserved the environment as well.

Marshes and other lands are stll being ruined by developers, along with the valuable, future food supply which they could provide. What will the increasing population eat?

Why Controlled Burns Do More Harm Than Good

It is better to trust nature's own, innate wisdom than to try to impose human control over it.

Sometimes people become impatient with the invasion of natural habitat by alien plant species. They think that they can instantly restore the native species, rather than let nature take its own course. The fact is that alien species invade an eco-system which has already been disturbed by human interference, such as a place where trees have been cut down for agriculture. If the alien species are left to grow, they will re-condition the soil and then the native plants, which are better adapted to this climate, will take over again on their own.

One extreme example of the "control freak" mentality was the controlled burn at the north end of Toronto's High Park a few years ago. An area which had been regularly trampled by humans and canines was deliberately set on fire by self-proclaimed do-gooders, with very unnatural naptha gas mixed with diesel. The resulting clouds of smoke would have singed three leaves, disturbed wildlife in their homes, and polluted the air with toxins.

The plants which sprung up after the fire were native, all right: probably the largest poison ivy patch in all of Ontario. There was a narrow, one-foot wide pathway through the middle of this "field", which our naturalist group was guided through on an outing. If anyone had lost their balance and had to put their hand down on the ground, they would have spent the next two weeks reaching for calomine lotion. If another controlled burn were ever conducted to get rid of the poison ivy, the air would be filled with poison ivy smoke, which would go right into people's lungs for some distance away.

The other main plant which sprung up after the fire was lupins. Lupins are flowers with beautiful spires of colour, and our guide tried to tell us that they are "native". He was right, in that every plant is native to somewhere. He mentioned Nova Scotia as being a place where a lot of them grow, but they are no more native to there than to Ontario. According to Canadian Gardening's "Natural Gardens", most of the wild lupins in Ontario are garden escapes of Russell hybrid lupins from California. The lupins in Nova Scotia were introduced from British Columbia.

Another widely used excuse for controlled burns is that fire releases the seeds from the cones of the Lodgepole Pine, which would not grow without the help of fire. However, the Lodgepole Pine is native to British Columbia, not Ontario, and British Columbia already gets enough fires without anyone setting them.