Episode Summary: If you want to live a more sustainable lifestyle, you can start the journey right at home. Lori Sullivan, a contributor to the Carbon Almanac, has written a book to guide you in doing so.

Lori Sullivan is a personal development and career coach who has a strong passion for sustainability. She writes about green living, career development, and achieving personal goals. With over 25 years of business experience and knowledge gained from books, podcasts, and life itself, Lori aims to share her learnings in a simple and easily digestible format.

In this episode, we delve into various aspects of Lori's experiences and insights from her book, including:

• The inspiration behind writing the book
• How she selected the topics and structured the content
• Tips for responsibly disposing of paint and brushes after use
• Feedback from readers
• Key lessons Lori learned throughout her journey
• The importance of taking that initial step towards change

Join us as we explore Lori Sullivan's valuable wisdom and discover how starting small can make a significant impact on living a more sustainable life.

To order Lori’s book One Shade Greener at Home: A Room by Room Guide to Reduce Toxins, Lighten Your Environmental Footprint, and Live Simpler

To contact Lori, go to oneshadegreener.com

For more information on the project and to order your copy of the Carbon Almanac (one of Amazon best-selling books of the year!), visit thecarbonalmanac.org

Want to join in the conversation?

Visit thecarbonalmanac.org/podcasts and send us a voice message on this episode or any other climate-related ideas and perspectives.

Don’t Take Our Word For It, Look It Up!

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Featuring Carbon Almanac Contributors Leekei Tang and Jenn Swanson.

Leekei is a fashion business founder, a business coach, an international development expert and podcaster from Paris, France. 

From Langley in British Columbia, Canada, Jenn is a Minister, Coach, Writer and community Connector, helping people help themselves. 

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The CarbonSessions Podcast is produced and edited by Leekei Tang, Steve Heatherington and Rob Slater.

Hi, I'm Ima.

I live in Scotland.

Hi, I'm Jen and I'm from Canada.

Hi, I'm Ola Ji and I'm from Nigeria.

Hello, I'm Leaky and I live in Paris.

Hey, I'm Rod.

I'm from Peru.

Welcome to Carbon Sessions.

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from everywhere in the world.

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Hi, I'm Jen.

Hi.

I'm leaky.

And today we have a special guest with us.

I'm very excited to reintroduce to you because you might not recognize her

at first, but she is our introduction voice, Lori Sullivan, and she is the

author of a fabulous new book called One Shade Greener At Home, A Room by Room

Guide to Reduce Toxins, lighten your Environmental Footprint, and Live Simpler.

So welcome, Lori.

Thank you.

I'm glad to be here and excited to be talking live and in

person, not just on the intro.

It's so great.

So leaky, do you have a question to start us off with maybe?

Uh, yes.

One question I was burning, burning, burning to ask, um, is that, you

know, we've been working on the carbon almanac together for a while,

since, uh, I've joined and we've been working on different activities.

And you never mentioned that you were writing a book and I just, I

don't know how I found out that you wrote a book, but I just somehow

found out that you wrote a book.

So I was wondering what was the, yeah, what was the trigger?

What was the trigger?

Is it like a point you said, said, I'm going to write a book, I'm

going to write this beautiful book.

So, um, the book has actually been in my mind for probably eight to 10 years now.

I had started a business called One Shade Greener Back in 2010

and wanted to help businesses and individuals live more sustainably.

But it was just, it was too early.

And so when I got back in involved with the Carbon Almanac, it was renewing that

idea of, I think that there's a book here.

I think there's a way to help homeowners move more quickly and.

The time was just right.

And so I think the Carbon Almanac was part of the trigger that got me

back to writing the idea in my head.

That's great.

I have a question in, you know, it's such a big topic, it's such a vast topic.

How did you go about setting, you know, choosing what you wanted to include

and what you wanted to not include?

How did you go about that?

Well, That was actually more difficult than I thought.

Going into the process.

I started to organize all the thoughts and ideas that I had, and suddenly it

made sense to do the guide as room by room because when we're making changes,

we tend to be in one of the rooms and instead of putting cleaning, for

example, everywhere, like how to clean.

A toilet is best in a bathroom section.

You don't need to know that when you're in the kitchen.

So the rooms came up quickly and then from there the structure

underneath fell into place and it evolved as the book itself evolved.

And actually the book is very well made because, um, it

is structured room by room.

So you go to, and I'm looking at, , Uh, at the index, you start with, uh,

you know, we can just choose a room, uh, like it start with the, , with

the family room, the kitchen, the dining room, the office, and it goes,

it's really you go room by room.

What I particularly like about this book is that it's really well organized.

Like, . When you read a chapter and it can get overwhelming knowing,

learning about all the things you can do in the specific room to improve the

sustainability , and then to help brave this, um, overwhelm . You did something

that I think very, very small, is that you give uh, the five fast five.

The fast fives.

The fast fives five things that you can do to jumpstart your cleaning the

room and make it more sustainable.

And I think this sprint because, um, because it's helps tackle this.

Yeah.

Feeling too overwhelm.

one of the big things I knew going into the book is that what

holds people back a lot is time.

We're all so busy and we have so many commitments already in our life.

That I wanted to make it a resource guide that you could go to and you could go

as deep or as light as you wanted to.

So the fast five was a way that if you don't even have time to read the chapter,

just read this last page and it can give you five good tips in that room.

That's why the structure is, um, Again, so intuitive.

I want you to be able to jump to a chapter, jump to a topic, get

the information you need, and come back to it again and again.

I'm not sure I ever see anyone reading this book cover to cover the way that

you would, um, a more traditional book.

So it's more of a reference.

Yes.

And there's a lot of.

Brand suggestions and ideas throughout.

So for example, if you're looking for a new dish soap, there's brands

referenced and they're categorized.

There are three categories for all of the brands.

The first is Light Green, and those are brand choices who have improved

the ingredients of the product.

So it's pulling out those toxins.

The second level is dark green, and so those brands have better ingredients,

but they've also removed or improved the packaging, specifically getting rid of

the plastic packaging wherever possible.

And then there's D I Y suggestions as well, so ways that you can

actually make dish soaps, laundry detergent, et cetera, at home.

I haven't read the book yet, but uh, I'm looking forward to doing that.

Is it, is it for the homeowner or is it for a business or

can it be used for, for both.

Cuz I know you said you started off helping businesses.

Yeah.

This is more geared at the home, so it is going through rooms of the home.

I have started the process of one shade greener at work.

But the reason I think One Shade Greener at Home was the right first

book is because every organization is in the end just made up of

a lot of people who own homes.

And I think starting your sustainability journey at home, you learn a lot.

You learn a lot about recycling and toxins and packaging.

No matter what your role is at work, you can start to take those learning

and insight into the office every day and look for ways to innovate at work.

So it's definitely focused on home, but what I hope is it inspires action at work.

Um, this book is intended for an American audience, isn't it?

This is when I read it.

There are a lot of brands, not all of them, um, but um, a lot of brands I

have never heard of because I've never really lived in the US but I find it

very valuable because I, even though, you know, I didn't know the brands, I learned

some tips that I could use right away.

Like, you know, I have this, um, Fear , of polluting the earth with,

uh, painting the rooms because, um, I don't know what to do with the brushes.

You know, how to clean the brushes after I finished the pen because it's

all covered with, with, uh, with pens.

What I used to do is to.

Throw them away.

You know, every time I, I paint a room or I, I use my, my brush, I throw them away.

And I know that it's not something I should do.

There, there might be ways, but I didn't know where to look for the information.

And also I didn't know where to, I can, you know, what I can do with the paint,

, um, the of the pent, how to discover them.

And I don't, I didn't want to feel guilty and to feel responsible for polluting.

So I ended up not doing that very often.

And, um, you know, very few times I paint my house was, uh, through people I hired.

Otherwise I couldn't find a solution.

So I would like to thank you for that.

Yeah, I, and that's what I'm hoping.

It was a tough decision for me.

As I started writing the book, I started to realize that it was very difficult

to write for the global community.

Um, different countries have different appliances.

The brands are different, and that the level of recommendations I

wanted to make needed to be a bit specific to the individual countries.

So I was hopeful that there were tips in the book, like the how to dispose

of paint that leaky just referenced.

That would be applicable globally and you know, hopefully someday people

in other countries might pick up the structure of the book and maybe we

can find the brands in other countries for the more detailed references.

It was, it was though a tough decision to have to just make it,

I would say North American focused, not necessarily just the us, but.

Definitely North American brands are, are the feature.

So I, I feel like we're being left hanging here cuz I haven't read the

book yet and I don't know how to dispose of paint and I paint all the time.

So can you give us that tip so we get a taste?

So I, you know, you don't want to rinse your brushes out in the sink because

if you're, if you're rinsing them out in the sink, it's just going down

and it's just not, not good overall.

So the best thing to do is to fill a small container with water.

Um, this is assuming you're using a water-based paint.

You can like dip your brushes, get it all cleaned in that little

container, and essentially you just let the water evaporate and then

dispose of the container after that.

Um, the paint itself, if there's just a small amount in the bottom of the can,

you wanna let it completely dry and then dispose it that way, or, uh, you can take.

Obviously you can take paint to, uh, toxic waste days.

do they have those globally?

I mean here in the US there are days in the community when you can

bring your hazardous materials in.

Uh, paint is one of them, so you can always drop them off there.

Or a resource I use quite a bit is earth nine one.org and you can put

anything in that you're looking to.

Get rid of that shouldn't go in your garbage.

And it will tell you locations in your area where you can have

it recycled or handled properly.

Thank you.

That's great.

Yeah.

We have, um, we take our paint cans to a recycling depot.

Um, and, and we have a fairly complicated recycling system

in our home, uh, so that we.

We take things to different places around the city depending on who takes what.

And there's a big one in Vancouver that , we go to probably three or four times

a year that you park your car and you get out and there are all these stations

and you take things to all the, about 12 different stations where you put specific

things in, specific bins, um, that they will take there that often they don't

take at the regular recycling place.

So, but we do have places like that here as well in, in Canada.

Yeah.

, I have a question.

Uh, while we're waiting for, , Christina to join us, I would like to sh

to ask you one of her question.

She was wondering, um, how was the process of testing all these products?

Because you say that in your book, you're listed, I think 200 products.

So that, that was, um, the initial question.

Did you test all them?

And , the second question related to that is how do you,

do you keep this list updated?

Because I assume that when you started writing the book, um, you know, you

started with a list of product, but they are new products that are, that

could be bare, um, all the time.

So is, do you have a process for testing the products that you, um,

that you recommend in the book?

So a couple of things on that.

I have used many, but not every brand that is mentioned in the book.

So I wanted to make sure that I was giving people a bit of choice.

Um, so for example, if I had only used one laundry detergent, I didn't want

to suggest that that is the absolute best laundry detergent out there.

So what I did instead was a lot of research.

I looked on sites like the Environmental Working group and what are their

ratings of different products.

There are ratings out there for different clothing brands as well as spent a lot

of time on the website of the companies trying to learn about their values,

learn about where their products are made, how the workers are treated.

There are a lot of the brands that are extremely transparent on their

website, so they list every ingredient in the product so that you know, there

isn't a chemical or toxin in there that you are not comfortable with.

So those that I haven't tried, I did a lot of vetting, vetting on their

websites and with third parties.

Oh, and the second part of your question, which I'm just remembering is

how do you keep this list up to date?

You know, I think that's gonna be a tough one because things do change so quickly,

and I think we are all excited that we keep seeing more and more environmentally

friendly products out there.

So I guess one of my wishes would be that this book can't

keep up with the pace of change.

And that there's a need in five or seven years for another version

or an update with new brands.

That's a, that's a hope because that means companies are really starting

to change and make a difference.

The low fidelity way that I currently have is a spreadsheet, and so when I see

a new brand, I add it to a spreadsheet I have and post about it on my blog.

That's the way that I'll start communicating new brands.

You have to share with us the link to your blog because I

didn't know that there was a blog.

The blog is actually easy because it's one shade greener.com.

Oh, okay.

So how easy?

Yeah.

One shade greener.com.

So what, Lori, have you learned through this whole process?

What stands out for you?

As you have, uh, completed this book and now it's out in the world.

That's a really interesting question.

I think that I realized that I have really learned a lot in the changes I've

made at home over the last 10 years, and I don't think I was talking about them.

I mean, that's at home, like you're, you're doing laundry, you're.

You're using household products.

It's not like you go to work or social events and have conversations

about these things, but now that the book is out, I feel like I'm having

more conversations with people.

You know, that people will ask me questions, will talk about

products, they'll let me know brands that maybe they've found

that I've not heard of before.

So, I think the biggest change is just more dialogue, which is part of

what I hoped for the book, is that it would encourage people to make some

transitions, whatever makes sense for them, um, and start conversation.

And have you had, um, feedback, have you heard from people?

Like, I'm wondering, you know, if there was, there was something that stood

out for you in in what people, how people have responded to this book.

I think, you know, there's been a lot of moments that were exciting for me.

Um, Seth Godin did a review and said that I was the Marie Condo of sustainable

living, and that was really fun.

Uh, people have shared with me fun little facts from the book.

I remember one conversation where, There's a tip in the kitchen section

about using bread that, um, you know, would go to waste to make croutons.

And she mentioned how her kids stopped eating the crust of bread

and she was getting so frustrated and didn't know what to do with the

crust, and now she's making crouton.

So learning the little ways that the book has inspired people, or even, you

know, leaky story about the paint, it's.

It's just fun to hear people's stories and what they pulled

or took away from the book.

What I, um, felt from reading the book is that, yeah, well this is, I'm probably

influenced by the Mary Condu analogy because it sparks when you talk about,

you know, this things, it sparks joy.

And, um, and yeah, this reminds me of, you know, you were talking about you

starting implementing more sustainable practices in your home, but um, you were

the only one, or you started and, uh, you didn't really care that your, uh, husband

wasn't paying, really paying attention.

All your kids were not helping.

But slowly, gradually, little by little, they'll join you.

And so is there something that you could, um, , help, uh, listeners or

your readers, um, you know, , help them to have this discussion with people

around them to help them, you know, um, enroll people in, in this journey?

Yeah, I, I've got a couple thoughts to that.

Um, the first is just the name of the book itself and the brand that I started.

So the whole philosophy of one shade greener is it's not like a race or a

competition start from where you are.

And so if you're not very green at all, we're not looking for

someone to flip to completely dark green in a matter of moments.

Just make changes that feel right to you, and then you can look

back five years from now and see that you made a big difference.

And I think that that's where I was when I started at home.

Like there is so much that you can personally change.

So if you are picking up a Starbucks coffee every morning, Bring your

own mug like this is, this is you.

It's not about your whole family.

It's a change you can make.

You are probably in charge of purchasing your own clothes.

At my house, I was in charge of the laundry.

I did all of the laundry, and so I just changed our laundry products.

Now, if there would've been a big backlash on.

My laundry doesn't smell right or feel right or whatever.

We could have had a conversation, but no, no one said anything, so I just

made changes in the laundry room.

And then, so I feel like I started with the changes that were

within my span of control and.

I knew that I couldn't convince anyone immediately to start making

changes and hopefully by demonstrating some they would follow over time.

But I wanted them to make the their own choice and be on

their own individual journeys.

And that is my philosophy that I think sometimes the more we try

to push people to make change.

They resist the change.

And so I just wanna present the option and simple things you can do

that will protect our environment.

But when you read the book, you'll also see that it not only helps

the planet if you get the toxins out of your products, it's actually

helping the people in your home.

And then some of the ideas are also going to help your pocketbook.

So, There's, there's ways you can save money by living

a greener lifestyle as well.

I love that.

uh, I firmly believe in that live by example, and and especially kids.

They're so, they're so attuned to things.

It was during, , uh, not, I guess it was a few months ago, that it was really hard.

It was really expensive to buy lettuce.

And it wasn't gardening season.

And um, and I had gotten one of those hydroponic things to grow lettuce in

the house, but it hadn't grown yet.

So we bought, and, and I just resist doing this anyway, but there

wasn't an option cuz the, there wasn't enough lettuce in the stores.

I don't know what was going on.

But anyway, we ended up buying a box of that organic lettuce.

And well, you'd think we'd done something absolutely horrific

because our kids are like, you have boxed lettuce, us in the fridge.

What is wrong?

Is something going on?

Like, we committed a crime.

And I thought that was really funny because, um, they, they clearly

notice yeah, that we almost never buy lettuce in a plastic box.

Right.

And I thought, well, good.

, they're noticing, they're noticing when we do something

that's outside of our ordinary.

Um, and then they're questioning us on it, which I also thought was good.

I felt a little guilty, but I said, at least it's organic.

I don't understand why organic lettuce has to be in a box, but, you know.

Yeah.

Anyway.

But yeah, I think the living by example is, uh, a good one.

Well, and yeah, everyone also just needs to start wherever they are.

I mean, we know globally, the US is behind a lot of other countries

in en environmental aspects.

Many, many of them.

And so someone who is in France like leaky might take different things from

the book than someone here in the us.

So.

It's all a matter of starting where you are and seeing what else can you do.

And like you said, lead by example.

I'm going to ask you a question from Cina who I've been trying to

join this call, but unfortunately, uh, she hasn't been successful.

So she gave up, so her question because she had a lot of question

and one of the question was, Did you look at the timing of cleaning

with changing tides or are there any unconventional ways to approach this?

And she was thinking of the book, moon Time, the Art of Harmony

with Nature and Lunar cycles.

That is one that I did not look into, but I can tell you I'm completely

fascinated and I have put the book on my to be read list, so, I've been

thinking a lot lately about how the moon cycles impact our environment

and how they impact us as well.

I actually went to a full moon ceremony a few weeks ago and we had the discussion

about how our bodies are made primarily of water so that it's no wonder.

That we feel things at different times of the month, just like the tide comes

in and out, um, impacted by the moon.

So I think there's something interesting there, but I have not heard of like

cleaning in relation to the moon.

So I'm excited to learn more.

I also think it's interesting the innovation that can start

coming, not necessarily from the moon, but from nature.

I.

Was able to rewatch the screening of Beyond Zero about a month ago, and

you know, just hearing how they took concepts from nature to come up with

things like removing the glue as the interface to keep the carpet tiles down.

I just continue to believe there's so much we can learn about nature and its

systems and how to help us innovate toward a more sustainable future.

Yeah, actually we did a conversation with, uh, uh, a while ago with Brian

and Christina on Biomimicry, and we had so much fun that we'll do it again.

Yeah, I think that's really cool.

Yeah.

So, Lori, if you wanted to, , sum up.

This book , in One Call to Action, what would, , what would it be?

One Call to action.

It's interesting because the first place my mind went was to a tip, and

then because I couldn't decide between tips, it immediately went to start by

starting my, my one tip is to take a step.

Whatever step in whatever room that feels right for you.

And if you begin the journey, you may suddenly find yourself very interested,

reading more, looking into more ideas, and then you just keep moving down that path,

becoming a little bit greener every day.

So my tip, start, start.

Start with something little.

That's great cuz we can all do that.

I think it's a great way to start and, uh, a great piece of

advice to end this conversation.

That's right.

Well, thank you so much, Lori, for, uh, for sharing your book with the world

and for coming here to talk to us, and we're so excited to hear your voice live.

Yeah.

We love hearing it as our intro, but it's so great to actually

see you and talk to you and, um, know that you're, you're doing.

Your step in the world and, uh, you're making a big difference.

So thank you.

Well, thank you and thanks for having me on.

Okay, thank you.

You've been listening to Carbon Sessions, a podcast with carbon

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