Cleaning contretemps

I went out for a drink last night. I know, a drink! It felt wildly liberating. I hadn’t realized how long it had been until I did it. Walking down the street at night on my own, meeting a friend, sitting at the bar…It all came back to me surprisingly easily. In fact before I knew it I was halfway through a bottle of vinho verde and it was 10.30.

Anyway, that’s not really my point. My point is that I got home in a fabulous mood which only got better when the hubby announced he’d booked a cleaning lady to come today (a cleaning lady – such luxury!) and we were having a lovely chat until he mentioned The Shopping List.

Ah, The Shopping List. For those non-New Yorkers among you, The Shopping List is something every cleaner here has. It almost always features Ajax, bleach and ream upon ream of kitchen roll and your cleaner is within his/her rights to refuse to clean your house unless his/her exact specifications are met (at least, that's how they make you feel). It's been so long since I've had a cleaning lady I'd forgotten about it.

“I have to go and buy her a load of cleaning products in the morning,” he said. "She needs Ajax, Fantastik with bleach, toilet cleaner, Windex and kitchen roll."

“Er, no you don’t,” I said matter-of-factly. “We have all that Seventh Generation and Babyganics stuff, and she can use white vinegar for the windows.”

What happened next was weird. “I am not going to tell her to wash the windows with vinegar,” he exploded. “It’s not fair.”

I was a bit taken aback. I mean, it’s not as if I’ve been particularly quiet about my stance on cleaning products - you'd think he'd have noticed by now. Then it got weirder.

“Freya, she can’t do her job without this stuff. It’s like if I took your computer away and told you to do your job. She barely speaks English, she’ll be trying to clean with your crappy products and worrying if she’s doing a good job. It’s not fair on her. I won’t do it.”

See how he did that? Sometimes it’s really annoying having a sweet empathetic husband - one always come off looking like the b*%$h in the house. But I’ve been playing this game too long to fall for that one.

“Do you know women who stay at home have an 80% higher rate of breast cancer than those who go to work and it’s because of those cleaning products? And you want to expose Dot to this stuff because you won’t stand up to the cleaner? Blame me, tell her your wife is crazy, I don’t care, but I'm not having it,” I said - my turn to be all righteous and indignant. “And anyway, the products aren’t crap.”

“Yes they are. I want the house to feel clean. I want my oven shiny not all full of crusty shit,” he said, and then played his trump card. “If you want to clean the oven with baking powder that's fine but you do the cleaning.”

It's so boring when he does that. He knows I'm finding it hard to keep body and soul together and am indeed doing as much cleaning as I can muster on an almost full time job, mum-stuff, making Dot's food and five hours sleep a night and have devloped acne and a spare tyre as a result. (He does the same thing about the laundry. "If you don't want all your woolens shrunk to Dot-size, you do the laundry." Well, yes darling, but WHEN? And in case you're wondering, I write this on the subway these days so that's not a solution.) He flounced off to bed. We rolled to opposite sides of the mattress and went to sleep in frosty silence.

By this morning he’d mellowed. “Give me a list of what I have to get then and I’ll go,” he said grudgingly.

At lunchtime I called home to find out how things had gone. “Oh fine,” he said insouciantly. “She said she really likes Ecover products.”

And this evening? The house looked lovely. The lovely cleaner had been completely accommodating and was Dot's NBF. And the hubby was passing the Ecover off as his idea.

Readers' Tips

Dear readers,

Thanks so much to those of you who sent feedback on what works, what you liked, etc. Turns out your fave thing is pictures of Dot. And there I was thinking you were logging on for my scintillating eco advice and dazzling wit. Ah well, whatever it takes, but you'll have to wait till the end for the pic. What? I have to get you to read on somehow...

Some readers sent me their best tips (the formatting here has gone bonkers and am too tired to spend any more time figuring out why - soz):

• from Penny: "try washing soda crystals to clean waste pipes from basins and sinks and to clean wash hand basins and baths. It is very effective and does not contain bleach, phosphates or enzymes" [I haven't found any yet, but will keep trying]
• from Looby: "I must recommend

reusable cotton wool pads that you pop in their own little bag in the washing machine" [these are brilliant - cotton wool is one of those things where you probably don't think about how wasteful you're being, but these are the perfect solution. Also, the course of googling to find these, I stumbled on washable baby wipes. Has anyone tried them? Is really icky but then again...]

from Nick (Dot's uncle, the dentist, he's in the UK) in response to our wine question: "most Australian wines are organically grown, but cannot market themselves as such, in case of an outbreak in which case they may need to use pesticides. Our French neighbours are not so enviro friendly (no suprises there then), so it's a tough call to make" [we'll find out about Californian wines - see if the same is true]

from Damo in response to my 'Wal Mart hoodwinking us' piece: Wal Mart is going to change what organic means. [I found the NY Times article he suggested. You have to read it (here) - is v. interesting analysis of the pros and cons of 'big' organic. Here's the 1-line summary: "These foods may contain no pesticides, but they are drenched in petroleum even so". Oh dear. I guess the scales have fallen from our eyes. Better than nothing but apparently not much - maybe. The jury's still out...]

the hubby has even got in on the act, emailing me daily news stories about green stuff (the best one from today: this from The Independent)

Some readers responded to say I'm making them feel guilty by doing so much. Well, I'm not so perfect, believe me. In fact, just for you lot I'll come clean about one of the really big chinks in my armour: showers.

What can I say? I love showers. I know I should be keeping showers short, switching the water off while I soap up and shampoo, and buying an eco-friendly shower head (this I will do when I have some cash) but the fact is our bathroom is fer-eezing at this time of year (no heating in there of any kind. In a wooden house in the mountains! And it's 9 degrees F out there right now!!) and the shower is the rare bit of me-time luxury I get these days (forget pedicures and massages, I now remember even uninterrupted brazilian waxes fondly). And so, every morning I take my dressing gown off, shivering, promising myself this will be the day I start short showers, and then I get under that lovely hot water and I just cave in and stand there, immobilized, for just one more minute, just one more minute....Fortunately it's about then that I hear (or think I hear) a little someone squeaking and I turn the shower off and hastily dry myself and get myself dressed.

To be fair, for the last year or so in our overheated New York apartment, and especially in the summer, I really was turning the water off while I washed my hair; it's just at the moment I can't face it. And at least I rarely succumb to the temptation of a bath. But every time I get out of the shower, I know I've been bad. I wait for the hubby to pick me up on it (this is one place where he, having very little hair to wash and therefore being a very efficient showerer, could claim the mroal high ground) but he never does.

But now you know. And now I've told you I guess I have to do something about it. Apparently 3 minutes is the optimum. I'll start timing myself tomorrow, the coldest day of the winter so far.

God, my timing is off.

Now, in reward for your patience, here's the promised pic: in her littlegreendot suit and matching socks, knitted by her grandma:

Ooh, those eyes.

Old Scrubber

The hubby had to nip to the city for work yesterday which meant Dot and I were stranded at the cottage without a car. I used to be vehemently anti-vehicle but when you live somewhere like this, I hate to say it but it’s more or less essential. Without one, Dot and I had to find a way to entertain ourselves using only those resources to hand.

Fortunately my old mate Catherine saved the day by emailing me a long and detailed article from the Guardian (UK newspaper) about homemade cleaning products (you can read it here). This day seemed like the perfect opportunity to finally get round to our long-awaited experiment.

Nothing if not ambitious, we began with the oven - people were coming for dinner and I’d been noticing how filthy the oven door was getting (where do those revolting brown drips come from?). The article said to mix a paste of salt, bicarbonate of soda and vinegar, so we did, although cider vinegar had to stand in for the white that was called for (I can’t imagine it makes any difference). The concoction fizzed in the manner of a GCSE chemistry experiment when the vinegar went in - definitely more fun than just squirting a bottle of something. I spread it over the oven door with a spoon and set to with a scrubbing brush.

Things got off to a fabulous start. The grime was really shifting, especially from the glass window. “That’s pretty impressive by anyone’s standards,” I said to Dot, who was watching the exercise keenly from her bouncy chair.

Then it was time to clean the paste off. I cut up an old t-shirt of the hubby’s to make a cloth (feeling very pleased with my own resourcefulness and also foresight in having kept it for just such an occasion), dampened it and started trying to remove the now very brown paste from the oven door. This was easier said than done. Firstly, there was tons of it. And secondly there was, I now realized, salt caked all round the inside of the window and stubbornly stuck in the gulley round the door seal (I also noticed that my knees were frosted with white grit which must have sprayed off during the vigorous efforts with the scrubbing brush). I wiped, rinsed the cloth, wiped, rinsed the cloth, and so on about seven times, and still I hadn’t got it all by any means. Neither had all the brown drips gone – about half remained and there was now salty brown gunk dripping down the outside of the oven and brown puddles forming on the kitchen floor. I was getting a bit frustrated (and had the distinct impression Dot was sniggering at me) so I decided to settle for a slightly smeary finish and a slightly cleaner oven and move on (my leggings meanwhile came clean only after brushing with the implement I normally use for exfoliating my legs).

Undaunted I decided to tackle the hob. I went at this with one of the e-cloths the article mentioned. These were introduced to me by my mother and are pretty amazing: you can clean even quite stubborn stains with no product at all, just water. All evidence of my homemade curried carrot soup was soon dispatched, as was the residue of the hubby’s boiled milk from earlier.

So impressed was I with the e-cloths that I decided to give the bathroom a quick once-over. The results were similarly gratifying. I also gave the loo a scrub with the brush and no product, as the article suggested, but then while my back was turned Dot, who was resting on my knee and is now scarily good at grabbing, seized the toilet seat and I realized this no-product loo cleaning wasn’t going to give me the peace of mind I needed as the mother of a child whose hands spend most of the day in her mouth. I washed her little mitts with soap and water and then prodded a bit of Babyganics cleaning spray around with the loo brush. That would do it.

Next up: the kitchen floor. The article recommends bicarb in warm water; I just used water, a bit of old t-shirt and some elbow grease and it seemed to do the job. Mind you, it made me realize how unfit I am – I was panting and sweating by the end of 10 minutes groveling about on my hands and knees.

I finished by sweeping the stairs and landing – no vacuum cleaner to save electricity. (In fact, I do this every day because having just had a baby, my hair is falling out in handfuls; keeping on top of this when your hair is dark brown and all your floors are either white tiles or cream boards is a full time job.)

Overall, the experiment had gone pretty well. No dirt our eco-approach hadn’t been able to tackle. We decided we'd do it again and get a bit more fancy with essential oils next time.

Cut to 8 o’clock last evening and me checking up on the two organic chickens roasting in the oven. I opened the oven door to find it streaked with salt and the window caked with a brown crust like the porthole on a rusty old ship. “What’s THAT?” asked the hubby, aghast. “Er, my eco-friendly cleaning paste?” I said. “BLOODY HELL” he said back.

Mrs. Mop

"God, what's that smell?" said the mother in law as she came through the door last week to find me assiduously scrubbing away at a couple of picture frames. "It's the white vinegar I'm using to clean the glass - eco-friendly, you know," I replied. There then ensued a detailed discussion of alternative cleaning products (lemon juice, vinegar) and their respective merits.

Then two days ago, I found myself having this conversation with my grandmother: "I think the green way is best love. But I do use Domestos to clean my loo," she said. "What should I use instead?" I promised to show her the Ecover Mum's bought, or suggested she try white vinegar. "I do remember my mother using lemon juice to clean the silver," she said. "It's funny how the green way is coming back."

And today when my aunt (who's also switched to all eco-friendly stuff) came to visit Dot, we were chatting things over when she began recollecting the days when we were kids and she used to use bicarbonate of soda to clean the U-bend in her toilet. "Great chunks of limescale used to fall off, you know," she said wistfully.

God, what's hapenned to me? Only four months ago I was all about segmenting target audiences, sizing the market and identifying the key business issue, and now here I am conducting almost daily mothers' meetings on the relative merits of household cleaning products (eco-friendly or organic, natch). Whoever thought they'd see the day?

And here's the even scarier bit: Mum says she's got a book upstairs called Vinegar: Nature's Secret Weapon (bonus sections: Nature's Secret Weapons 2 and 3: honey and garlic) and I'm really excited to sit down with it tomorrow and see what it says. Not to mention itching to getting home to make and try out some homemade cleaning products from vinegar, bicarb, tea tree oil and lavender.

Anyone think I need to get out more often?

Tomorrow: Dotpics - I promise.

Well done Mum

Mum's really taken this 'saving the planet for Dot' thing to heart. Everywhere I look there's a bottle of Ecover something-or-other peeking back at me - loo cleaner, shower gel, hand soap, washing-up liquid, you name it... She's even switched to green laundry detergent which for a laundry nazi like her is a major sacrifice (the MIL who's also obsessed with white whites as done the same and so far both are pleasantly surprised with the results).

I have had to have a word with Dad about his lack of compost heap, though. He's working on it. Maybe he, Dot and I can get out in the garden and do it together - a tri-generational green bonding activity. Actually Dot's great-granny also knows a thing or two about composting so hell, let's get her in on the act too!

I hope to have news of compst heaps up and running in a day or two.

Subtle Hints?

The hubby tore this out of the Guardian for me yesterday:

"And so to our coveted award for the season's Crappiest Advent Calendar, which goes this year to the admirable Landmark Information Group, which offers "complete environmental due diligence" (though not, sadly, on the chocolates contained in its calendar, which are noxious). Along with said confectionery, each new day brings a bright new factoid, including: "500,000 homes are on or near toxic waste in the UK"; "Radon is the second highest cause of lung cancer in Britain"; and (our personal favourite) "More than 700,000 households could be affected by past industrial activity around Birmingham". Happy Christmas to you too."

He said it was an example of environmentalism gone mad. I think he might have been hinting that I need to calm down.

In fact I have noticed people acting slightly awkwardly around me lately, a bit like how I am around vegetarians (bristly because I think they're judging me, but at the same time sheepish and apologetic because deep down I know they're right).

While I would like to say they really shouldn't because I'm not here to judge you, the truth is I do inadvertently find myself sizing up friends' houses for green-ness. Ecover washing up liquid by the sink? Brilliant. Need to take my jumper off because it's so hot in there? Hmmm, do they know how wasteful that is? Glass and plastic in the trash? Etc. Then ensues an internal conflict - do I say something or keep schtum?

My tactic has mainly been to direct people here so they'll hopefully be motivated to take action by our fascinating stories, rather than browbeaten into submission. This is partly because I don't want to be seen as a hectoring zealot/smug, self righteous old cow (a bit late for that, I know) but equally because people in uninsulated old wooden houses really shouldn't throw stones (people delight in nailing me on eco-crimes, by the way. For instance, last night I saw my brother for the first time in ages. "You know how it said on your blog that T drives off to get your wine every night around six?" he said, with the look of someone about to move their bishop to check. "I know, you're going to say we should buy a case so we only do one trip every twelve days and save petrol," I pre-empted. "Bingo!" he said gleefully. (Truth is, the hubby needs to get out of the house at least once a day and we live in the middle of nowhere, but I am working on it)).

But sometimes I just can't help myself. Come to think of it, I have even found myself quoting this that I read on the Seveth Generation website:

A 15 year study in Oregon, comparing women who didn't work outside the home with women who did, found a 54% higher death rate from cancer in the women who stayed home. The study suggested that chronic exposure to cleaning products played a role.

Scarily similar to the advent calendar; oh dear, am already a walking 'harbinger of doom and gloom' cliche. TIme to lighten up. But then, I'd want to know this stuff so I just figure you would too...

She's not called littlegreendot for nothing...

Here's Dot earning her green stripes by washing up in the washing up bowl using the Ecover washing up liquid:



What? She's 3 months old now - that's quite old enough to be helping out with household chores. You have to earn your pocket money round here.

Since I have this pic, I may as well use it as a way to put in a plug for using eco-friendly washing-up liquid. If just being all cuddly and nice isn't motivation enough for you, how about undermining George Bush and his oil buddies?; this from the Seventh Generation website:

"If every household in the U.S. replaced just one 25 oz. bottle of petroleum based dishwashing liquid with our vegetable based product, we could save 118,700 barrels of oil, enough to heat and cool 6,800 U.S. homes for a year."

To take away the nasty taste of that preaching, and apropos of nothing, here's Dot rowing her chair across the kitchen table using wooden spoons. (No prizes for guessing who came up with this brilliant way to keep himself amused.)

Does the supermarket sell humble pie?

I never thought I'd say this, but Dot and I actually had a very satisfying morning at the local supermarket, Pecks. We entered disconsolately, certain to find nothing to fit our principles, and the total lack of any organic items in the fresh produce section did little to lift our spirits (we did at least find a bag of locally grown apples, but not until we'd put back a butternut squash because it seemed ludicrous to us that it was imported from Mexico when we know they're in season down the road at River Brook Farm. This checking the origin of everything we buy is new to us but we're thrilled to have discovered another way to be geeky and self-righteous).

But then we stumbled on a small organic foods section, enough to equip us with organic black beans and pasta. And in the frozen foods aisle - usually the last place we'd shop - we came across a pocket of organic breads and organic frozen fruit and vegetables - so we grabbed some. Pecks also stocks delicious yoghurt and cheese from the local Tonjes Farm (they look rather incongruous amidst the plastic cheese and nuclear chicken breasts, and we couldn't help noticing that the cheese as a little mouldy, suggesting we might be the only ones who actually buy the stuff), so we stocked up on those too.

Feeling emboldened by these happy finds, I asked the lady at the checkout whether they stocked eco-friendly loo roll or cleaning products. She looked at me blankly but offered to call the manager. This friendly lady immediately agreed to look into stocking the paper and told me she might have it as soon as Thursday, all being well. She then took me to the cleaning aisle where she proudly showed off their one brand of eco-friendly washing-up liquid as well as a multi-purpose cleaner and Dr. Bronner's Sal Suds. Apparently other customers had requested these and so Pecks had introduced them.

So it's humble pie for dinner for us tonight - there we were dismissing this as a lost cause when all we had to do was actually bother to look instead of acting on assumptions and ask, rather than sitting there moaning and being all superior (typical bloody New Yorkers, us). I'm normally a bit shy about these sorts of things but if making a change is really this easy, we're going to have to get over ourselves and become ecopests.

We'll be checking back next week to see if the loo roll arrives. Then we'll tackle our next crusade: the fruit and veg, and after that, lightbulbs. Of course, once they've turned up in-store, the next step is encouraging people to buy them. Now that might be a little bit trickier...

Oh dear, a rant just crept up on me...

So I'm afraid I have to admit that we've fallen off the wagon again, but this time I'm blaming the supermarkets.

It was the nappies, of course. Yesterday I drove a half hour to our nearest health food store in Honesdale to stock up on all my fave green goodies (nappies and cleaning products, organic fruit and muesli, etc.). We got back and I'd just put Dot down for a nap in one of the eco-friendly nappies when she started protesting loudly. I thought I'd better check that the nappy wasn't the problem and what I found in her pants (and her tights, onesies, knickerbockers, hat, etc. Well, alright, not her hat) was not pretty. Apparently Dot and her bowel movements have suddenly outgrown the size small Seventh Generation numbers (don't worry, we'll pass them on to a new baby we know. The unused ones, natch).

Now, in the UK this would be no big problem - you'd simply nip to the local supermarket and pick up size medium eco-friendly nappies aplenty, along with all the non-toxic cleaning products, fair trade shade grown coffee and organic or locally grown fruit and veg and your earnest little heart could desire. But we're in America, pretty red-state America at that, and so there's not an organic apple, let alone a compostable nappy, to be found in any supermarket this side of New York (or LA).

I know Wholefoods and co are bucking the trend - and in fact our friend Jamie arrived for Thanksgiving from the city today with a lovely care package of Wholefoods organic honey, tea, chocolate, pie and milk (hm, trying to pre-emptively atone for anticipated bad behaviour, JB?!), but it'll be a long while before WFs makes it to Honesdale. And I know Wal Mart is, to much fanfare, meant to be going organic, but in their Honesdale branch there's not an organic scrap to be found, and even on their website all I could find in the organic section was organic milk, organic Ragu pasta sauce and organic Kelloggs Raisin Bran. Hardly changing the world there, are we?

Hold on, I'm not quite done with this rant yet. Since I was a kid, you've been able to buy eco-friendly washing up liquid and cleaning products in every supermarket in the UK. The leading UK retailers are currently falling over each other to be the greenest on the block (for example, you can now buy a windmill to generate your own power in B&Q, the UK's equivalent of Home Depot) and whatever their motives, this has to be a good thing for everyone. So how come the US is so far behind? No wonder it now ranks #53 in the list of eco-friendly countries (only China, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia do worse - not exactly stiff competition, is it? The UK on the other hand is #2. But this wasn't meant to turn into a US/UK pissing contest).

Phew, sorry about that, so anyway, my point is, we ended up - and it really pains me to tell you this - buying a small pack of Pampers to tide us over until the compostable Nature Boy and Girl nappies arrive in the mail.

I tell you, it wasn't easy being green in New York but it's really an uphill struggle sometimes out here.

If anyone knows, by the way, how to convince a supermarket to change its stocking policies (and I know convincing the locals to buy is probably the answer) please let me know! And I promise to try and be less serious tomorrow.

This picture has nothing to do with anything, just though you hadn't seen Dot for a while and she looks nice and bonkers in this picture. Now onto the serious stuff...

Is somebody trying to tell me something?

So New York’s been a bit of a struggle. Firstly my computer refused to connect to the internet from Lucy’s apartment, hence the radio silence – well, that, and the fact that Dot’s decided she’d rather protest for four hours than go to sleep at bedtime. Last night the wily little bugger had four of us taking it in turns to rock her off, and every time we relaxed, thinking she’d gone down, snap, the little eyes would open, quickly followed by the little mouth, and back to the griping, grizzling and caterwauling routine. Think it was her drunken Daddy who finally got her off around ten (knocked out by the alcohol fumes, perhaps?). But obviously the baby had to take precedence over the blog (the baby takes precedence over everything, little darling).

On top of that, I have to confess we’ve strayed from the righteous path. Yesterday afternoon we somehow found ourselves in Zara Baby where we were hoodwinked into buying some distinctly non-organic and almost certainly non fair trade (but extremely cute) stripy cotton tights. Zara makes exactly the kind of disposable fashions we’d promised ourselves we’d eschew in favour of second hand, vintage, long-lasting and organic garments. Bad bad Freya and Dot! At least we asked for no plastic bag with our purchase (by the way, let’s all start doing this as often as possible. We were in Club Monaco yesterday too (looking, not touching, promise) and I noticed they wrap everything in tissue before it goes in the bag, as do most shops. Of course it feels rather wonderful when you get home and unwrap your shiny new item from its gorgeous parcel, but think how much even better it would feel to be able to be all smug about saving a tree instead (especially around ‘the holidays’ when I dread to think how much damage all those pressies cause to the environment as most are wrapped once by the shop, then again by us in wrapping paper). Might even assuage some of the guilt of the shopping spree (hey, we’re getting good at these conscience-easing shopping tips). OK, rant over).

And then to cap it all off, I just committed the cardinal household cleaning product sin – I used…BLEACH! In Lucy’s shower I realized I’d forgotten my shampoo so helped myself to her rather lovely Clove Aveda shampoo and conditioner – you know, the stuff that dyes your hair (of course I only picked that bottle because it was the more environmentally conscious choice than the Pantene). Well, I would have told you anyway Lou, but now I’ve been totally caught red – or make that sort of reddish-brown – handed because the conditioner somehow splattered off my hair and dyed the tub and tiles instead and WOULDN’T COME OFF no matter how hard I scrubbed. So I dripped my way to the kitchen to look for white vinegar, the eco-friend’s alternative to bleach, but all I could find was Clorox. So I did it. I used as little as possible but bleach is bleach is bleach. And goddamn the stuff, of course it worked. Anyway, as penance I have since spent ages scrubbing my hands a la Howard Hughes to get rid of all traces before Dot wakes up from her nap. Don’t want to be corroding her precious baby skin with horrid bleach and fumes now, do I?

So do you think somebody’s trying to tell us something? We’ve had a lovely time really, but maybe it’s time to go home. We’re slipping back into bad habits here in Vice City.

My Mum

Just wanted to send a big shout out to Dot's Granny who, since Dot's birth, has switched to all eco-friendly household products - recycled loo roll and Ecover cleaning and laundry products. She thinks her sister might do the same too - thanks Auntie D!

Now, you might not think it matters how my parents choose to wipe their botties, but you'd be wrong. This is from the Seventh Generation website:

You Are Making a Difference™ If every household in the U.S. replaced just one roll of 500 sheet virgin fiber bathroom tissue with 100% recycled ones, we could save:* 423,900 trees* 1 million cubic feet of landfill space, equal to 1,600 full garbage trucks* and 153 million gallons of water, a year’s supply for 1,200 families of four!

You see? This is what we're all about, me and Dot - we don't care if you read our blog (well, we do a bit) but we do care a lot if, because of us, you're inspired to do something green.

So, cheers Mum!