You don't "have to" be or do anything! But, knowing that any effort to cut down your meat consumption will mean lives saved, suffering prevented, and resources conserved, you might consider heading in the vegetarian direction! Any dietary change can be difficult, so you might start off with just having one vegetarian meal per week and increase this as you get used to your new diet. As long as you replace the meat you usually eat with other filling protein-y foods like beans, nuts, or tofu, you might find that eventually you don't miss eating meat at all! Set goals for yourself like cutting out beef by spring, and chicken by the fall, or whatever you feel comfortable with. Click here for more transition tips).

It can also be tricky when visiting the houses of friends and family members who aren't used to serving meat-free meals. Try to help family members understand why you have made the choices you have (this is a great way to spread awareness) and/or make and bring a vegetarian dish for others to try. Be sure to respect the choices of others, and their generosity in preparing you food.

Different Oteshaites deal with tricky food situations in different ways. For example, when we biked through White River, Ontario, an extremely generous restaurant owner didn't know we were vegetarian and provided a small group of Oteshaites with chicken dinners. Nervous glances were exchanged and nobody really knew what to say... gracious thanks were offered, and after the restaurant owner turned away, Elly and Levi volunteered to eat all of the chicken and the rest of us just munched down on the fries... Andrea once brought up the idea that if the animal has already been offended, why also offend your host? Others, like Jocelyn, can't stomach the taste of meat anymore, and she says she's full if the plate comes around. And Simon believes that respectfully declining food according to your personal values makes an important statement. All in all, making the choice to become vegetarian or vegan is about making the best choice for you and for the earth. How that plays out in different situations is up to you...

Veganism refers to making a conscious effort to avoid all forms of exploitation of and cruelty to animals. A vegan diet does not include any dairy, meat, eggs, or other animal products. A vegan lifestyle also does not include buying animal products such as leather, wool, cosmetics that have been tested on animals, feather pillows, many types of glue (hence our search for the perfect homemade glue recipe!), and many other items that upon their inspection involve animal by-products.

With all that said, it sounds like vegans have a lot of "don't's", but it's all in how creative you can be! As a vegan household, "Otesha Central" still enjoys "ice cream", chocolate cake, pancakes, you name it! We've found a host of alternatives... and with conscious nutritional planning we are getting all of the nutrients we need to have a healthy diet! Check out a vegan cookbook from your library, or click here to start off. Another great resource is The Otesha Recipe Book! Once you learn the substitute tricks, you can turn almost any recipe into an animal-free, compassionate masterpiece!

The package is where it's at, conscious shopper : ) Fair Trade certification will have the label shown below. Only some of the organic certifying labels are shown below because there are many labels depending on the product you are looking at and where it's been certified. Check out the website of any organic certification you see on a product to find out their certification standards.

Then you have found an amazing opportunity to take action and change the world! Talk to the managers (or submit a customer comment card) at your local health food store, grocery store, and other food vendors and give them some information about fair trade products and why they should carry them. Check out this link for tips for your discussion. Students at Trafalgar School for Girls in Montreal started a campaign to get their school snack shack to get fair trade chocolate, and now they can buy fair trade chocolate over lunch hour - way to go, girls! And while you're waiting for their order to come in, you can also order fair trade products on-line.

Click here to read our glossary of terms, and if the word you are looking for isn't there then e-mail it to us so we can add it on!

This isn't always the case, but when it is more expensive to buy fair trade or organic, we personally don't complain - we believe that you can't put a price on our planet and all the animals, (including people) living on it. If I have enough money to buy coffee, then I have enough to pay the person who produced my coffee a fair wage. And for both organic and fair trade products, the more people who buy these items, the cheaper they will become! So give up the packaged expensive foods and put that money towards buying organic foods, or drink a little less coffee and get some fair trade java in your cup... Go out there and taste the ethics!

Anyone who makes different choices can find it difficult, whether the choices are sustainability-related or not. The best way to deal with this is the same regardless of the choice: be confident in your own values, explain your choices to those who ask, and respect people's differences - these differences are what make the world an exciting place to be in! We want people to adopt sustainable lifestyle choices because they reflect their values and hopes for the future, because they make them happy, and because they are fun! Therefore making others feel guilty or defensive about their choices will make them less likely to want to hear your point of view. Instead, practice tolerance and respect, treat others how you want to be treated, and show those around you that sustainable choices make YOU happy and allow YOU to have fun.

As Careless consumer so eloquently states in the Otesha presentation skit..."Bad jobs are better than no jobs. By buying this GAP shirt I am helping these people, and without these admittedly poorly paying jobs, they'd be far worse off."

This basic equation appears hard to refute, but we believe that there is another solution... one just outside the box!

We would like a world in which every worker was paid a living wage, where trans-national corporations have to make long-term investments in local economies, where local governments have more power, where there is no longer a race to the bottom, but rather a system which fosters global equality. We would like a world where there is no such thing as a sweatshop.

Buying a GAP shirt won't make that happen...

But buying clothes from a company that pays their workers fairly does... Taking your dollars and supporting good jobs rather than bad jobs does... And buying second-hand clothing or doing a clothing swap with your friends and taking the money saved and giving it to an organization that helps to make this future a reality does (The Otesha Project sent $500 to Kids Can Free the Children from their second hand t-shirts, providing 5 families in Kenya with a goat to provide alternative income so the families' children don't have to work in sweatshops)... And writing a letter to a company about how I want them to treat their workers and let my government know about the role I want them to play in the next round of free trade agreements does...

Making the BEST choice is difficult, as there are many things to consider (we are holding a discussion group at Otesha Central to discuss these very issues), but all the choices listed above are BETTER. For example, when Jocelyn's running shoes literally fell apart, she had to make a decision. She found and bought a pair made by New Balance #765 shoes - which are vegan and are made in the US where the factories workers are paid $17/hour. That is just one decision, though - which country's economy you are choosing to support is your choice. We are still on the lookout for the very BEST choice, and if you have any ideas let us know : )

Overall, we believe that instead of trying to apologize for sweatshops by saying that at least they do some good, we should look at the entire global economic system, recognize that it is far from where we want it to be, and realize that the status quo and our current shopping habits aren't making the changes we want any time soon.

GAP isn't responsible for saving the world's poor. And yeah, even if they are bad ones, sweatshop economies are providing jobs...

But we believe that as consumers we have a responsibility and the potential to make better choices, for we ALL deserve better than that.

You often hear of ways to save water, but very rarely the reasons behind such actions...

Joss and Jess struggled with this one a lot when they first returned to Canada. They felt intuitively that they should conserve water because they had seen so many people who lived without it... to waste it seemed horribly disrespectful. However, there were many people who didn't share this view, people who wanted a scientific rather than an emotional reason for water conservation, so we found a whole bunch!

A lot of energy and chemicals are used to pull water out of lakes and rivers, treat it, pump it to your home, heat it, and cycle it through the treatment process again. Therefore, the less water you use, the smaller your ecological footprint.

Less than one-half of one percent of all the water in the world is actually drinkable! Our current use reflects a belief that there are massive amounts of water available- this is thinking only as a Canadian, and only about the immediate future. If instead our actions were dictated by global water availability, and we thought of ourselves as citizens of the earth needing to share with all of 15 million species around the world, then conservation would seem totally logical.

The bottom line is why take more than you need? This goes for more water, more food, more stuff... just say no!

Any other reasons you can think of? Send them to us! If you're convinced, then check out our areas of action section for ways to conserve water.

Ahh... Zinga (as the tour's hybrid was called - Zinga meaning "change" in Swahili), the machine that carried our food, our props, our injured, our sick, and yes, a Honda Civic hybrid she was! A hybrid gas-electric car is one of the most efficient cars on the market, and has a number of cool features... First of all, there is no need to plug this car in, because the fuel cell battery charges itself! As the car decelerates, the battery recharges, and when the car accelerates (a gas-intensive process), the battery kicks in to reduce fuel consumption (you can even watch the battery levels change on the dash!). The car Honda hybrid also has an anti-idling feature: whenever you press down on the brake to wait at a stop light, for example, the engine shuts off (cutting down fuel use and emissions!). Then when you remove your foot from the brake the engine restarts immediately, and you continue on your merry way. The car has the exact same body as a 'regular' Honda Civic, and the only difference we noticed was a super quiet engine and the awesome mileage - about 1000 km to a tank!

Now back to our Zinga... she was a special car. Not only did Honda Canada lend her to us, she was covered in beautiful stickers, was declared a No-Apathy Zone, and she helped us showcase a more sustainable choice all across Canada.

First off, even though travelling to Kenya was a catalyst for action for Joss and Jess, there are many activists (including Oteshaites) who have never travelled overseas, and there are many people who have travelled overseas who haven't become activists. That said, if you do want to travel overseas, doing it in a culturally, socially, and environmentally sensitive way is really important. Just like everything else, research the places where you will be spending money (the airline, the hotel, the tour operator, etc.) and ask them what kind of measures they take to try have the least harmful impact possible. If you are looking to travel or volunteer overseas with a group of other young people check out trips led by:

• Leaders Today
• Schools Without Borders
• Youth Challenge International
• Canada World Youth

Look at every trip as a learning experience, and an opportunity to create global solidarity. Remember that you are a visitor; be gracious, humble, and thankful for the privilege of being welcomed into a culture other than your own. Bring your learning home and tell others (including us!) about all that you have appreciated and gained from your experience.

Do we ever! Some of our Otesha favourites are:

• A board game with trivia questions aimed at family and friends
• Coupons for back-rubs, fancy homemade dinners, a load of laundry, etc.
• Asking friends or family to take a sustainable action for your birthday (i.e. on my birthday I want everyone to try and get to work in a sustainable fashion)
• The Otesha Book!
  
• Carbon offsets
• Wind power
• An acre of rainforest
• Make a homemade journal
  
• Or click here for some other out-of-the-box gift ideas

Got any to add? Send them in!

Finding out how you want to vote with your dollars is challenging, but by asking this question you've already taken an important step in realizing the power your dollars have. Whenever we find a really great company, (like the day Jocelyn discovered Green Earth Office Supplies) it's like finding a gold mine! So make sure that when you do find companies that support your values, you support them with your dollars and your word of mouth by encouraging others to support them as well.

Some great places to start your search are:

• www.responsibleshopper.org
• www.newdream.org
• www.ibuydifferent.org
• www.wam.umd.edu/~travismj/cgst.html
• www.greenpages.org

Click here to see our Oteshafying guides...

Well, what's your definition of far? We biked across Canada so perhaps our views are different...? However, if you aren't up for some long-distance cycling, we have listed the options below in order of the earth's preference (smallest impact):

1. Walk or bike - human powered transportation all the way!
2. Bus
3. Train
4. Carpool in as fuel-efficient a vehicle as possible
5. Air travel is the form of transportation with the most negative environmental impact. If you are going to fly, look for a direct flight, and consider offsetting your carbon emissions, either by taking the actions yourself, or donating to an organization that will.

Something we love to tell people about, but often have trouble slipping into conversation. So many of the women on Otesha eventually tried using the keeper and as each of us discovered the newfound joy of a super convenient, cheaper, healthier, and waste-free alternative, we became more and more convinced that we needed to tell as many women as possible! Click here to find out why you gotta try it!

And for those who aren't interested in the keeper, you can also use luna pads, or make your own... These reusable pads help the environment, and stop bleached and chemicalized products from being next to your skin. So try them out, spread the word, and change the world!