In Honor of Earth Day

Go green with paint...

My husband and I recently moved (with our baby of course!) from Brooklyn to Long Branch, NJ. We are two blocks from the beach, have a huge backyard where I am planting all kinds of delicious organic herbs and vegetables (photos to come) and we just had the entire house painted.

We used Olympic Premium Interior Paint. It is a zero VOC, low-odor formula and I love the quality and colors. VOCs or Volatile Organic Compounds are a group of carbon based chemicals and just some of the thousands of chemicals found in ordinary paint. As the paint dries, these substances are released into the air and produce ozone. Short term, they can cause breathing problems--especially in children-- long term, studies have shown frequent exposure to be linked with cancer.

Even after the paint dries, these chemicals are still released into the air in smaller quantities. Until very recently, VOCs were thought to be a key ingredient in making durable, high-performance paint, but that is no longer the case. Most paint manufacturers now sell low or no VOC paint.

So let your family, your environment and your painter (if you hire one!) breathe a little easier and paint your home "green."

Photos Courtesy Olympic Paint

Green Never Tasted So Good

        Photo courtesy Emeril Lagasse

I just realized that I get the Planet Green channel.  Now I am recording a bunch of programs from it.  If you aren’t sure if you get it or on what channel it would be on, just go to their website and put in your zip code and provider to find out. 

The first thing I tuned into was Emeril Green, which is a show starring Emeril Lagasse.  He was preparing a recipe using farm-fresh pears baked in the oven with goat cheese and honey.  I actually made this last night and it came out great. You can find the recipe here. I liked the show because it was filmed in Whole Foods and so it was kind of like watching a cooking presentation right in the store. 

The other program I’ve been recording and watching is Stuff Happens. The tagline for the show is: Unlock the secret lives of everyday things before and after we consume them.  The episode I watched was about eco-friendly home insulation options compared to fiberglass insulation, which can be unhealthy for your lungs as well as for the environment.  The host, Bill Nye, also talked about toxic malodorous mothballs and energy saving window choices.  It is a good eco-education packed into a half-hour without any preachy-ness involved.

I am also looking forward to watching Adrian Grenier (I would watch him on just about anything) in his show Alter Eco.

Welcome to my blog!

Spring is here and so is Mothers for Organics!

When I started my company, Batya Organics, more than 2 years ago, I had just gotten married and becoming a mother was something that seemed far into the future. In that time, I’ve not only gotten my company off the ground running, I also gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. My son Hayden was born in August 2009 and his birth, along with the birth of my t-shirt company, have been a labor of love. It all reminds me of what Maya Angelou wrote in her book, Letter To My Daughter:

“I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters…and I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you.”

This blog, in its own way, is my offering to you. I hope it will illuminate, inspire, and give good practical ideas for making your home, your food and your family a little more earth-friendly and healthy.

My blog will be a collection of ideas and events for Batya Organics, along with links and comments about my favorite organic items and products, eco-friendly events, and observations about motherhood. I hope to help you navigate the sometimes-murky waters surrounding products and practices that are call themselves “green"“natural” or even “organic.”

When Hayden was no more than a twinkle in my eye, my nieces and nephews were the original inspiration of my vision to create organic cotton t-shirts for toddlers. This is for them and for you and your children as well.