Media Advisory

February 8^th, 2011

Local Store Creates Idle Free Zone Parking Lot

Edmonton – On February 2^nd, 2011 Earth’s General Store erected ‘Idle Free Zone’ signs around their parking lot to let vehicle operators know that they should consider the health of the community before leaving their vehicle running while they are visiting the store.

“It looks like city council is not going create an excessive idling bylaw which will make Edmonton a healthier city therefore we need to independently create awareness and idling free zones and hopefully this will bring about change in our community,” says Earth's General Store owner Michael Kalmanovitch.

It is estimated that about 90 million people watched Super Bowl in Texas this past weekend and people attending it may have complained about the cool/cold temperatures running up to the game (as reported in the media). The cold weather that hit Texas also hit major growing areas of Mexico (the overnight temperature was cooler in Northern Mexico than in Edmonton on February 4th –3C versus –1C). Many of the young plants were destroyed

There will be some fresh organic produce items that we will not be able to get from our suppliers for a period. Sorry for any inconvenience. I feel for the workers in the field and small producers who just saw their income take quite a hit.

Some of the lettuce we receive will be blistered and smaller since the workers will have trimmed off the damaged outer leaves. Some other items that will be affected are: asparagus, onions, carrots, radishes, cucumbers, bell peppers, celery, zucchini, peas, beans, melons. tomatoes and cauliflower.

To mark navel  orange season Layne ordered in a nice variety of oranges – Cara Cara (a navel orange that is almost a blood orange), Navel, and with memories of Christmas some Californian Satsuma (Mandarin oranges). He put out samples of the blood and everyone snapped them up.

Come and try some!

Later this week we will be having some Fair Trade Mangoes to compliment our Fair Trade Bananas and Blueberries.

- Posted Monday, February 7th, 2011

Today is our one year anniversary of our store being at the new location. Thank you all for your support throughout our first year of business.

Moving to our new location allowed us to do more things differently. Reusing a lot of the existing building structure, reduced lighting and energy use, composting of all our organic matter  (recycling the cardboard and paper via bicycle energy), cleaning with eco-cleaners, providing a space where people can purchase organic food at a fair price, making available a wide variety of products in bulk so people can refill their own containers, our green acts reward programme, building of our green roof shed (still under construction but should be finished this spring) and I am sure many more.

The sales of Hydrogen Peroxide from Gold Top Organics has been going well since we started to bring this item into the store – surprisingly well in fact. Quite a few people purchased several bottles at a time and inquired about larger sizes being available.

On our latest order I brought in 4 Litre jugs of the 35% Hydrogen Peroxide. This will save people about 10% over purchasing this amount in the 1 Litre containers.

- Posted Saturday, February 5th, 2011

Before I expanded the store to include food I would purchase bags of rice and popcorn in large 25 pound( 11.34kg) bags. Over the past year several people have come into the store and asked – do we sell bags of grains, cases of beans, etc? The answer is yes!

When people order products in case lots we give them a 5% discount. If you wish to know what something will cost multiply the kilogramme price (or individual item) by the number of units in a case/bag.

So if you are interested in saving a bit of money on certified organic products come in, phone (780-439-8725) or email (egs at shawbiz.ca – remove spaces and put the usual @ symbol between egs and shawbiz) an order in and we will let you know when it is ready for pick up. The usual turn around is one week.

- Posted Saturday, February 5th, 2011

Every since I moved to the new location I have meant to put up signs stating that let people know that we ask them not to idle while they are at the store or our neighbours (the hair salon). Yesterday I put up four signs that say “IDLE FREE ZONE – Healthy Communities Don’t Idle”. I obtained these metal signs from Climate Change Connection in Manitoba.

Idling is not a very logical behaviour. It is a gross waste of resources will only having minimal benefits for the vehicle occupant(s). It causes excessive wear on the vehicle engine, wastes fuel, creates pollution without benefit, is not usually the object for what it was created for (transportation), and is inefficient (using fuel to not go anywhere).

Please don’t idle. If for some reason you must please minimize the duration.

- Posted Thursday, February 3rd, 2011

Local activist and blogger Michael (Mike) Thomas has started a bokashi pilot project. He has involved a variety of people and families and they are providing feedback to Michael about their experiences and such.

If you are interested in learning more about Michael’s project click here.

Michael bought his bokashi kit from Earth’s General Store last year and has been quite attentive and thorough about recording the progress of his indoor compost system

- Posted Thursday, February 3rd, 2010

The other day we started to get quite a few phone calls about soap nuts; whether we carried them, how much they were, etc. After the first couple of calls I asked one of the callers what had sparked their interest about this product. She said she had seen it on the Dragon’s Den (a CBC television show that has people come on to seek investors for their invention/company/etc).

Fortunately we were running out of stock and I had just placed an order to restock our shelves.

We have soap nuts in stock and in a variety of sizes – $4.25 of 20gm (about 3-4 nuts to try it out), $10.00 for 250gm, $17.00 for 500gm, $32.00 for 1kg.

We source our supply from Kaley’s Soap Nuts in Manitoba.

- Posted Thursday, February 3rd, 2011

A week ago a customer mentioned that we don’t have a great selection of herbal tea (caffeine free). Well I promptly ordered in several bulk teas from one of our suppliers and now I think we have a pretty decent selection. Of course my selection was somewhat curtailed to items that were certified organic.

The new teas (herbal and green) I ordered in and are on the shelf in our ‘tea land’ area and are: