P’lovers the Environmental Store (Port Perry)

Okay, there’s no easy way to say it - P’lovers in Port Perry is for sale. There. I’ve said it. Perhaps you’ve heard already through the grapevine? We’ve been discussing it quietly for a little while now, but have yet to make an official announcement. Here it is.

After six fantastic years as “Head P’lover” in Port Perry, I need to change direction. Sadly, it’s that simple. The decision was not an easy one, I assure you. P’lovers as a business has never been stronger; eco-awareness amongst the general population has never been higher; I worked through the most difficult early years; all that trial and (lots of) error is in the past; there is incredible growth potential. When valuating the decision to leave, there are lots of things in the “You’re an idiot for selling” column.

What can I say? It’s a family thing. A matter of priorities, you know?

Of course every cloud has a silver lining and all that jazz. Since I’m stepping out of the picture, it means there’s a wonderful opportunity for another high energy, environmentally-minded entrepreneur to step forward and make P’lovers even bigger, better, more relevant — raise the bar even further.

Is that YOU?

It’s a great business. It’s a fun business. It’s a rewarding business. You really do get to make a real difference in people’s lives every single day. That’s the thing I definitely like best about P’lovers — connecting with people. Lots and lots of really wonderful people. Whether it is our longtime customers; the eco-junkies who can always teach me a thing or two about green living or the newly initiated with their wonder and enthusiasm, rarely a day goes by when my day isn’t brightened with these encounters.

Perhaps you are looking for a good retirement business. Or a good family venture. Or it is time to put a little more meaning into your career. Or you have a few good eco-conscious buddies who are all hankering for a new challenge. P’lovers definitely fits any and all of these scenarios.

It is definitely worth a click to get a little more information, don’t you think? This is how I started P’lovers in Port Perry six years ago - with a desire to make a career change, a google search, a click of the mouse, and a series of emails with Liz Crocker, “P’lover extraordinaire” and co-founder of the franchise.

Seems like yesterday. Time flies, doesn’t it?

-Steve

* P’lovers Business Listing

We, here at P’lovers, have started a new venture. We all feel it is important to buy locally, to keep our money close to home. There is a bakery (Hank’s Pastries) and a butcher (Herrington’s) on the main street that we frequent and now we can happily tell you we are purchasing our produce from local farmers. And guess what? They deliver!

There are a total of 7 families here at Queen Street Commons taking part in this exciting community supported agriculture (CSA) project.  For 20 weeks throughout the summer and fall, Coopers Farm in Uxbridge delivers us our farm fresh produce every Thursday morning.

We are in week number 2 and so far we have been enjoying an abundance of lettuces, spinach, strawberries, rhubarb, green onions and garlic and are looking forward to much more. The bushel baskets arrive smelling and tasting like the great outdoors and all we have to do is cart it to our homes and refrigerate.

To arrive home after a full day and throw a salad together that we know has come from our community farmers just makes it taste better.

The baskets are filled with whatever produce is plentiful at that time of the season. We are happy to know we are getting the season’s best, freshest goodies.

-Jude

• Find an Ontario CSA near you.

I love a good idea — particularly when it involves improving life here at P’lovers AND it doesn’t come from me. So when Jude came to me recently and said that P’lovers needs a lending library, I said “Cool.  Keep talking.”

She said, why not share our love of reading with the customers at P’lovers? We have a huge range of great books in our collection and it is often difficult for our customers to choose - particularly when the are buying books as gifts.  We are all avid readers and have enjoyed many of them.  While we recommend titles as best we can, it would be even better if our customers could “try before they buy.”

I was sold and the P’lovers Lending Library was born.

Here’s how it works (and it is really simple):

• Create a Profile with us by leaving your name, phone number and email
• Ask at the counter to see the available books
• Select your title and staff will register the book to your ‘account’
• Enjoy the book and return it to P’lovers within two weeks.

It was initially difficult to choose the books to lend as there are so many that we absolutely LOVE.  Here is the list we have available so far.

Lending Library Titles:
100 Ways to Keep your Soul Alive (Brussat)
Artist’s Way (Cameron)
Complaint Free World (Bowen)
Crunch Time (Monck / Hanley)
Everyday Activist (Norton)
Fast Food Nation (Schlosser)
Green Living - the E Magazine Handbook
The Ten Trusts (Goodall / Bekoff)
The Four Agreements (Ruiz)
We are the Weather Makers (Flannery)
Writing Down the Bones (Goldberg)

So, to all you reading junkies, please come on in and check out our rapidly growing Eco-Bookshelf.  If something strikes your fancy (and it will), but you are not quite sure, ask if it has been added to our Lending Library.

-Steve

The title of this post, Unoriginally Speaking, is in reference to a smashingly brilliant, late teacher of mine (Rev. Roger McComb) who, amongst many incredible accomplishments, wrote a weekly newspaper column by this name. Which brings me to this post…

Betty Zyvatkauskas of Metroland Publishing and author of the Explore Durham Blog, stopped into P’lovers a couple of months ago for a browse. Here is her lovely account of this visit.

-Steve

Recently at a staff meeting we were discussing greenwashing. It got me thinking…and that can be a dangerous thing; Jude thinking.

It brought me to this point on a dull Monday morning, what exactly is greenwashing and who is guilty of practising it?

Greenwashing, the act of painting a ‘green facade’ on something to prevent us from seeing what is underneath. It allows companies and corporations to portray themselves as environmentally conscious and responsible. It is put in place to fool us, to pull the wool (or organic cotton) over our eyes.

And I hate to admit; but it works, it works because we get tired of thinking all the time and trying so hard to sort out what is good and what is not, what we can consume and what we can’t, what we can wear, what we can’t, what we can clean with and what will cause us irreversible damage. I am here to help…

How are we able to tell if a green company’s promises are true?

• -the claims are vague and are not backed up with facts. “natural” “environmentally friendly” “good for the planet”
• -the product is billed as having ‘NO environmental impact’, this is pretty much impossible.
• -the company might just state that by purchasing their product you are ’saving the earth’.
• -the claims are not verified by a third party.
• -the green products represent a very miniscule portion of the comany’s business.
• -the company does not respond to enquiries regarding their green-ness.

So, basically we come back to Buyer Beware! We have to be aware of what we are buying, we must pay due diligence before we put our money down on the counter.

Last week a young man entered the store and approached the counter to purchase an Efforts Hemp T Shirt. Before he completed the transaction he asked some important questions about the product: where it was made and how it was transported to P’Lovers and he then asked to see the company’s website. I was pleased to answer his questions and told him it was great to have customers who care, who have that need to know what they are buying and from whom. He left the store with T Shirt in hand (he refused a bag!) and I was left with a good feeling, he went the extra mile as I did as well.

I can assure the consumer at P’Lovers that we pay close attention so that you don’t have to, but if you have any questions or curiousity about the origin or ingredients in our products, please ask, we love to chat and share our knowledge.

-Jude

Editors Note: Check out the Six Sins of Green Washing by TerraChoice for further exploration of this topic!

We also encourage customers to help educate us by referring us to resources and sharing thoughts on our products!

-Image Care of the Mirriam Webster Visual Dictionary

Travel with me today.

I am making a change in life.

I am picking out a new shampoo and conditioner.

Currently I am using a generic brand shampoo, picked from the grocery store as the only one touting biodegrable-ness. I bought a massive bottle of it. The ingredients list was long and it was highly scented. Mass produced in some far off land..I knew it wasn’t the most ethical choice, but it certainly was the least offensive with what I was faced with at the grocery store.

So today is the day. I washed my hair with it one last time, and noticed that the only conditioner I have left is a groddy kind that smells like nasty.

Before purchasing my shampoo and conditioner today, I’ll reflect on my values and ethics (see my last blog) And I ask myself, how can I ensure my personal values/ethics are upheld in the simplicity of my shampoo purchase.

I know I seek a solution that has the following values:

• biodegradable to leave the smallest footprint in our local water: I figure Lake Scugog can take all the chemical breaks it CAN..especially our fishie friends
• recycled/recycle-able packing, minimal packaging
• small business, Canadian business, family business. That there was sincere Intention behind launching the product
• something reasonably healthy, not filled with synthetic fragrances/artificial colors, Sodium lauryl and laureth sulfates, Formaldehyde donors (e.g., diazolidinyl urea), Known carcinogens, mutagens and teratogens, parabens (all the things generic shampoos have)  So that I feel safe to use it on my Baby: therefore eliminating my feeling of need of mutiple products within the shower. A product that won’t throw my skin and bodies balance off i.e. my pH, etc etc.

Now vanity does play a role here, I like a scented shampoo. Not from Port Perry originally and only here of recent, I am notorious for complaining that I smell Port water on EVERYTHING. I need something that smells pretty to help mask the alleged stink that is Port Water.

So I am left examining my choices from the P’lovers Inventory.

My contenders are: Green Beaver, Earth Safe, Burts Bees, Avalon Organics, Desert Essense

Conclusions:
Reflecting on my above criteria, CLEARLY my first choices are Earth Safe and Green Beaver. They both pass all of my preferences with FLYING colors. Now to select my scent….

I DO have strong suspicion I will be going home with the Earth Safe hair products today…

-Colleen

I find it staggering that in 2008, a large percentage of the power we use in Ontario comes from coal-fired generating stations. Yes, that’s right, coal — the same stuff used to power steam locomotives over a century ago!

One of the challenges of running any business, and in particular a planet-friendly business like P’lovers is managing energy usage. We take measures to conserve as much as we can, however, in reality, it simply takes a lot of energy to run a business. (I try to minimize my heart palpitations by keeping the steam locomotive analogy out of my mind as much as possible.)

When building your own off-grid renewable system is not an option, then Bullfrog Power is most definitely the solution. P’lovers home office has been Bullfrog Powered for a couple of years, however, our retail store only hopped on the lillypad this month.

Bullfrog has a beautifully simple business model. Customers pay a small premium to invest in power from clean, emissions-free sources like wind power and low-impact water power instead of environmentally damaging sources like coal, oil, gas, or nuclear.

The switch was easy, seamless, and surprisingly inexpensive. Since P’lovers is part of Queen Street Commons, a shared-use facility, I had always assumed it would be difficult to transition to Bullfrog.

Boy, was I wrong. I already have an accurate calculation of our energy use compared to the whole building. All my Bullfrog contact needed was our recent hydro bills and that simple energy use calculation. Within a few hours, I had a quote in my inbox for slightly less than $17/month.

I was astounded! For such a trivial sum, I could offset every killowatt of energy we use with clean, green, renewable energy! Not only is Bullfrog an amazing investment in the future of our planet, but it is also buying me piece-of-mind. That, is a pretty good purchase as far as I’m concerned!

-Steve

(Editors Note: The Ontario Clean Air Alliance has been campaigning for years to eliminate coal from our energy supply mix. Visit their website for a wealth of excellent information on the topic.)

If only I had a camera with me at work today…

This morning I woke, showered and went to the bedroom to get dressed for work at P’lovers. 

As I layered on my clothing, I came to an amusing discovery. Holy tamoly: I own the P’lovers wardrobe.

I start with a skirt. In the summer I purchased the cutest organic cotton ribbed sweetpea green skirt from P’lover’s sidewalk sale.  Add in a fabulously silky Bamboo shirt from Dreamsack and a MycoAnna recyled wool sweater and my absolutely FAVORITE thing I own: my Padraig slippers and a hair tye repurposed from the DreamSack bundle string…

I decide against the sweetpea skirt, once I realize I am head to toe wearing the P’lovers clothing lines, for fear I look a bit too commited to my job. After dressing the baby, I begin to see that the P’lover’s wardrobe doesn’t stop at me either.

Whats most amusing, its all clothing I bought prior to working at P’lovers.  I think I will be in trouble, with all the spring items starting to roll in. All crazy cute, AND stuff I can feel good about wearing. And really, I should be PROUD to be wearing the P’lovers wardrobe from head to toe.

FYI: a big ol’ box of bamboo silk DreamSack has just arrived. If anyone is looking for me, you can find me rolling in a sea of pj’s and baby clothes.

-Colleen

“Do you need a bag?” This is something that every P’lovers customer has heard at some point over the years.  The notion of offering a disposable bag to someone buying environmentally friendly products is something that has long irked me, yet in reality, it is often a requirement and occasionally expected. 

In July 2007, P’lovers adopted the BioBag shopping bag , the only 100% certified biodegradable AND compostable shopping bag on the planet. 

Unfortunately, there have been many plastic bag companies that have hopped on the “Green Bandwagon” and launched “biodegradeable” shopping bags.  These bags (some of which we tested), do not actually compost, but instead disintegrate into a mountain of plastic flakes - only marginally better than the traditional plastic grocery bag.  The BioBags, by contrast, can replace the bag in your under-the-counter kitchen compost bucket and will, in fact, completely disappear in your compost.

The BioBag is the next best thing to no bag at all (another discussion entirely!) and the improved piece-of-mind it offered me makes the investment well worthwhile!

Note: P’lovers sells the full line of BioBag consumer products.

-Steve

You can’t help but be excited to be an environmentalist in Canada these days.  Eco-awareness in the general public is at an all time high and as a result, “Going Green” is showing up on the radar screens of growing numbers of media outlets, politicans, and  corporations.  According to a CBC .ca news story, a recent poll by Decima research shows the Green Party at an all-time high amongst Canadian voters.

At P’lovers, we have been sharing our environmental message with our special customers since 1992 (and specifically in Port Perry since 2002), so this is definitely music to our ears.

Interestingly, we at P’lovers also see this as a challenge - a challenge to continue to stay ahead of the eco-curve.  We have dedicated 2008 as the year we focus on “Raising the Bar”.  We are examining everything we do – our product selection standards, our business operations, our educational committments — with the goal of increasing our environmental integrity even more.  There is always room to improve!

We will use this blog to keep everyone in P’lovers Nation up-to-date on our progress.  If you have specific ideas or constructive criticism to share with us, please feel free to do so.  Call us directly, email, or comment on anything you read.  Your input is important!

-Steve