Leslie Garrett

Leslie Garrett is an award-winning author, journalist and mother of three children who frequently send her to the mall in search of snow boots, underwear or whatever else they’ve outgrown. Tired of coming home with stress headaches, she began researching how to shop with a social and environmental conscience. Convinced she wasn’t alone in her desire to make smarter, more earth-friendly purchases, she developed The Virtuous Consumer, a syndicated column about socially and environmentally responsible choices, that appears regularly in newspapers throughout North America. Her book, The Virtuous Consumer: Your Essential Shopping Guide for a Better, Kinder, Healthier World (and one our kids will thank us for!) was released in July 2007. Leslie is the "green" correspondent for the A Channel's morning show and award-winning co-host of CHRW radio's "GreenWorld." She is a sought-after speaker who has presented at The Green Living Show, Cottage Life Show, Illinois Renewable Energy Fair, The GreenMom Show and many others. The Virtuous Traveler, her column about socially and environmentally responsible travel choices, appears on the website of NBC travel editor Peter Greenberg and in the Toronto Star. Visit Leslie at virtuousconsumer.com

My son is a dreamer. An absent-minded sort of kid who responds to every question with silence. Who’s always looking intently off in the distance or up at the ceiling. Then, when the question is repeated, he’ll look as if he’s just noticed you’re there and say, “Wha?”

It’s a trait that, not surprisingly, drives some of his teachers mad.

Vandana Shiva is a physicist, ecologist, and activist. Despite her deep awareness of the world’s environmental and social justice crises, she is filled with hope.

Hope, in this age of cynicism masquerading as science, is a scarce resource. We often treat it poorly — as if hope is the hallmark of New Age lunatics or wide-eyed children. As if it’s naïve. Passive. A longing … without any intention of rolling up its sleeves.

It’s particularly tough to be an optimistic environmentalist with such a steady accumulation of bad news: birds dropping from the sky from starvation because wetlands that served as avian drive-thrus during migration have been replaced with houses; renowned climate scientist James Hanson’s prediction of “game over” if the Tar Sands are developed; oil spills; nuclear meltdowns …

Shiva knows all this. Yet she’s hopeful.

With a world increasingly under environmental threat and corporations and lobbyists that peddle misinformation, hope isn’t a luxury. It’s all we have.

Valentine’s Day and American Heart Month may be over, but I’m still thinking a whole lot about hearts. Around the time others were opening up heart-shaped boxes and eating heart-shaped chocolates, my husband’s heart was being examined and analyzed by a team of heart specialists.

A friend recently reported to me that she was taken to task by a green-leaning colleague for selecting a juice box to drink at a networking function. Juice boxes, the eco-narc proclaimed, were NOT recyclable in their municipality. My friend sheepishly sucked on her tiny plastic straw, convinced that all her attempts to live green — riding her bicycle to work, growing her own organic produce — were wiped out by this one transgression.

With the holidays approaching, no doubt many of us are making a list and checking it twice. Ensuring that we find just the right gift to give to those we cherish in our lives.

Yet the giving is only half of the equation. We’ll undoubtedly be receiving gifts, too. And while many of us are world-class givers, can we say the same about receiving?

Once upon a glorious pre-perimenopausal time, my cycles were more reliable than NASA and the Mayans for marking the passage of time. My body responded to exercise, diet and a good night’s sleep as intended — by performing well and looking good. Heck, my body responded to wine, chocolate and a restless night’s sleep by performing well and looking good!

“The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.”
~G.K. Chesterton

Slow has become a four-letter word in our accelerated culture. And yet … when it comes to travel, how can we possibly expect to truly experience a place at a breakneck pace? How can we savor a blur?

My husband and I are currently planning a mini-break. With three kids, three dogs, three cats (see a pattern developing here?), we’re lucky to escape at all, but we’re working toward a three-day getaway.

But as we plan, we’re recalling our most memorable trips, hoping to recapture whatever made them great.

And we discovered the common denominator: In every instance that we remember as truly outstanding, we were doing something other than what we had planned … and we were taking our time.

Was “go green” one of your New Year’s resolutions? Even if your composter is still empty and there are chemical cleaners still lurking in your cabinets, don’t fret — Only 12 percent of those who make New Year’s resolutions actually keep them for a year. Which, frankly, is 12 percent more than I would have guessed. But if you’re like me and the other 88 percent, what can help us keep resolutions is the support of others.

With that in mind, this Earth Day I’m enlisting my family in the greening goals I set for 2011. And by “greening” (aren’t we all just getting sick to death of that word?), I mean treading more lightly on my wallet, my Daytimer, my blood pressure and Mother Earth. Surely THAT’s a resolution worth fighting for!

I didn’t always love to walk my dogs. It used to feel like a chore. One more thing on a long “to-do” list.

I would walk them, sure. But though my legs were taking me around the neighborhood, my mind was somewhere else entirely. Working through a magazine article I was writing that was giving me grief. Or having an in-my-head conversation with a friend I had argued with. Maybe berating myself for not waking up early to go for a run.

My home is undergoing a rebirth. It’s painful, long and decidedly unpredictable.

Most people might call it a renovation. But it’s more than that. It’s a new incarnation of what was formerly four walls and a roof into a home.

The rebirth is born of necessity — a leaky roof, drafty windows and stained broadloom carpet that harbored more than I wanted to consider within its fibers…