Paring Down

August 23, 2009 · Filed under green living

As you can tell from it being almost a month since my last post, this site hasn’t been much of a priority lately. It’s not that I’ve stopped caring about green issues, of course, I just haven’t had much I wanted to write about.

Last week I finally accomplished a big goal for the summer and got a whole car load of clothes, toys and other stuff to the Peace at Home shelter, a local women’s and kids’ shelter for victims of domestic violence. While of course there’s need everywhere, this felt a little better to me than hauling the stuff to the Salvation Army (and it’s closer to my house, so bonus).

Shedding all that stuff, though there is clearly more to go, makes me feel like I’m making progress in this whole less consumption/more mindful stuff gathering thing. But clutter isn’t just about the physical stuff, it’s mental and work-related as well.

Which brings me back to this blog. I’m not saying writing about green issues is clutter, or that it’s in any way unimportant, but right now (about six weeks or so from having a new little person to take care of) I’m very focused on getting down to essentials. And I’m just not sure I’m adding much to the conversation right now.

So I don’t think I’m going to be updating this blog much, if ever, any more. I hate to abandon it so quickly after it started. It was a fun experiment, but not writing and thinking about not writing fills me with guilt and takes mental energy I just don’t have right now.

I’ll probably keep the site open for a little while in case I come up with something I can’t resist writing about, but I’d guess by the time the wee one is here I’ll be thinking about so many other things that I’ll officially delete the blog to get it out of my mind.

Thanks for all the support and best of luck in your greening efforts!

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Getting Rid of Old Electronics

July 29, 2009 · Filed under green reads, how do i recycle that? · Tagged ,

Probably everyone who reads a site such as this knows the potential dangers of just tossing electronic equipment, and for that reason you’ve probably got a bunch of old, outdated stuff floating around the house because you just don’t know what to do with it or how to dispose of it properly.

Eighteen states and New York City have laws that make it the responsibility of the manufacturer to deal with recycling its electronic products, and 13 more states are considering similar proposals.

These states often have collection points where residents can drop off unused televisions, computers, cell phones and other equipment, which can be refurbished when feasible or broken down into constituent parts that can be recycled. In some cases manufacturers pay other companies to take care of the process, while in others the products go back to the manufacturer.

It’s estimated more than 99 million unused television sets sit in people’s homes because they don’t know what to do with them, and recycling has proven a popular option in places where it is available. Washington state was on track to have recycled five pounds of electronic waste from every man, woman and child in the state this year, while Maine says it recycled four pounds per person last year.

This is one case where manufacturers actually hope for national regulation, because they don’t want to have to deal with 50 different ways to collect and dispose of their old products. Here’s hoping the government listens to that desire soon.

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Sometimes You Just Have to Throw Things Away

July 24, 2009 · Filed under green living, green reads · Tagged ,

I really enjoy the environmentally minded website Grist, and its sage and funny advice column, Ask Umbra. She recently got a question that’s near to my heart, about whether it’s worse to throw things away that you’re not using or let them linger out of guilt about the environmental havoc you might be wreaking by throwing unpleasant things away.

The context was having made the switch from conventional to organic and natural beauty products and not wanting to wash those nasty chemicals down the drain, since that was kind of the point of giving up on the mass market stuff.

Umbra said in that case it would be better to just throw the old stuff away rather than emptying the bottles to recycle them, but the best solution would be to go ahead and use the products up and then get rid of the bottles.

This question got me thinking about the wider implications of throwing stuff out. I know a lot of my problem with trying to clean, purge and reorganize my house comes from worry over what will happen to this stuff when it’s not in my house any more. I’m trying to recycle, give away and sell as much as I can, but it’s slow going. And I know some things do just need to be thrown away.

Umbra is right in saying that there is going to be waste that has to be tossed as long as we keep consuming things and bringing more stuff into our homes. But to get down to the point where we are bringing less stuff in, some stuff has got to go out, and even if it goes out in the garbage can not the recycling box we need to be willing to let that happen so a new, greener home and lifestyle can emerge.

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Nature’s Bounty

July 20, 2009 · Filed under green living · Tagged

My husband and I have had a little backyard garden for a few years. Some years are better than others when it comes to production, but this year we seem to be having a pretty good year (except for the cucumber plant that died for no apparent reason before it ever made any fruit).

Over the weekend, we pulled this out of the garden:

garden-bounty

If I counted right that was something like 18 big tomatoes, three yellow squash, two jalapenos and I’m not sure how many cherry tomatoes (that plant was a crazy good investment, though, and I highly recommend one to anyone with some space for one).

And of course that’s not the end of things. There are more tomatoes that are maybe halfway to ripe, and others just coming along. There are at least three bell peppers maturing happily on the plant, a huge mess of basil and at least one cayenne pepper waiting for the warm days to come back and turn it red.

I love this time of year. The heat may be oppressive (though it’s actually gorgeous right now) and garden maintenance can be a bit of a pain (easier for us, since we grow mostly organically), there is absolutely nothing better than going out in the yard and picking something to eat. If you’ve never eaten a tomato still warm from the sun, you wouldn’t understand. But it’s really very cool.

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Wal-Mart’s Green Index Will Let Everyone Know How Green Things Aren’t

July 17, 2009 · Filed under green living, green reads · Tagged , ,

I’ve been a big fan of bashing Wal-Mart for a long time, though I’m always a bit conflicted about it because the company’s corporate office is nearby to where I live and I know it’s a huge part of our local economy. So I don’t want to see them do poorly, exactly, it’s just there are a lot of things not to like, too.

One of the things potentially to like about Wal-Mart, though, is its efforts to green up its stores, transportation and some of the items it sells. The company has been a huge pusher of CFLs, for example, and its working on the fuel efficiency of its truck fleet.

Now the company says it will phase in a sustainability index that will allow consumers to determine which products are the greenest and hopefully buy accordingly. The index will be based on surveys filled out by suppliers covering such things as the company’s greenhouse gas emissions, solid waste and water use, use of sustainable materials and socially responsible facilities, as well as other information.

All of this data will apparently be condensed into some kind of score that consumers can use to compare, say, different television sets or pairs of pants to determine which are better for the environment.

While this seems like a really great idea (and probably is), there are problems, such as passing the costs of environmental compliance on to the vendors at a time of economic hardship. While some of the costs may be passed back to consumers, Wal-Mart is pretty militant about companies meeting the price guidelines that it sets.

And consumers themselves might not be that willing to choose greener products if they do cost more, even if they do notice and understand the index and what it’s telling them.

It’s my feeling, too, though this is just a hunch, that a lot of products aren’t going to score very well on such an index. Sure, Wal-Mart has done a lot to bring in more organic produce and products made more sustainably, but a lot of their products still come from China and other countries, meaning a high carbon footprint (and less verifiable production conditions) no matter what the product is.

Still, it’s great to see a big company trying this. It will be interesting to see if and how it works out, how customers respond, and whether other big companies start to seek out more information about the environmental impact of their products and share that information with consumers.

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Compost Control

July 15, 2009 · Filed under green living · Tagged ,

I’m a big fan of composting. It’s a great way to cut down on your waste stream and provide yourself with valuable additions to the soil (since we have a garden, we can always use compost).

But getting started composting can be a little intimidating if you’ve never done it before. Knowing exactly what to put in, how to take care of it, when it’s ready and what potential problems can arise are all important, but the good news is you can learn a lot as you go.

Here’s a very quick overview of things I’ve learned through probably five or six years of composting.

Getting Started

First off, I would go ahead and buy a manufactured bin for compost if I were you. One with a rodent screen. We started out with a compost box made of wooden pallets wired together, and while it worked fine it did attract mice, who were then eaten (or sometimes brought into the house) by our cats. Not a nice scene.

Anything plant based can go into the compost. That’s table scraps, yard waste, leaves, etc. I don’t compost weeds, especially if they’ve already gone to seed, because the seed could survive the composting process and provide me with even more weeds next season when I spread the compost on the garden.

You can also compost things you might not have thought of, like your coffee grounds and tea bags, shredded newspaper or other paper (I don’t personally do this), even some packaging. A great overview of what’s in and what should be out (such as food scraps with meat or dairy involved) check out the awesome website Master Composter.

On Creepy Crawlies

Compost works because of bugs that munch on the stuff you provide and turn it into that black gold (yes, it’s poo). Most of the bugs you’ll find in the compost pile are great to have around, particularly worms. It’s common to get too much of a good thing, however, if your compost pile isn’t in good balance.

We, for instance, had a huge population of flies in our box earlier this year. As I learned from this great post on monsters in the compost, it was probably due to too much moisture and green stuff and adding more brown stuff (like old leaves) would have been helpful.

This post also helpfully explains that maggots aren’t necessarily a bad thing in the pile, which is something I’d always wondered about.

Pile Maintenance

One place I really fall down in my composting duties is when it comes to maintenance of the pile. I basically just throw things in, set it and forget it, and never turn the pile unless things have really slowed down and it’s not winter (when things pretty much stall because, again, I’m not great with the maintenance).

But to get the most out of your compost the most quickly, you’ll want to turn the pile (when I did it, I used a pitchfork) once a week or so to distribute the new additions and mix in the helpful bugs. But in my experience, particularly in the summer, compost happens eventually even if you don’t intervene that much.

(Also, if you’re not having the moisture problems I have been having, watering the pile every now and then isn’t a bad idea, either.)

Composting is actually a lot of fun once you’ll get started. It’s always amazing this time of year to see how quickly things disappear in the pile, and it’s great to know that your food waste will one day go back into your body as part of the vegetables you were able to grow with the help of the compost (at least when you’re not thinking about it being poo).

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Chemicals You Might Want to Keep out of Your House

July 10, 2009 · Filed under green living · Tagged

There are a bunch of chemicals that are commonly found in most of our homes that we really shouldn’t be exposing ourselves to if we want to live greener, ecoish lives. AlterNet helpfully published a list of 10 kinds of chemicals we should be avoiding recently to help us all green up our lives.

Some of them are pretty obvious, like conventional cleaning supplies, chemical insecticides and herbicides, fertilizers and air fresheners, but others you might not have given as much thought to, such as nonstick cookware, plastics and, in particular, our old enemies the plastic bags.

The nice thing about this list is that it offers alternatives to the products we’re all more used to using, so you can transition away from the toxic stuff as slowly or as quickly as you like. It’s a great roadmap for living more ecoish.

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Rainwater Capture Legal in Colorado

June 29, 2009 · Filed under green living, green reads · Tagged

I told you not too long ago about rules still in place in Colorado and many western states that technically make it illegal to harvest rainwater off your own land to water plants or for irrigation. Water rights that have been in place for a century or longer technically meant the rain belonged to whoever owned those rights, meaning you were stealing if you used water that fell on your property.

Though the law was rarely enforced in Colorado, and it was still legal to buy supplies for capturing rainwater in the state, now it’s officially legal for at least some residents to collect and use fallen water on their own land.

This represents part of a growing change in the west, where in some places in New Mexico mechanisms for catching water are required on new developments. But in Washington state and Utah it’s still illegal.

It’s good to see some change happening, especially amid studies that show most of the water that could be harvested wouldn’t end up in streams anyway, so the practice has no impact on water rights. Here’s hoping more states and cities will become more open to the concept of not wasting water that’s coming right out of the sky for us to use.

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It’s Recycle Week

June 24, 2009 · Filed under green living · Tagged ,

I had no idea that there was such a thing as Recycle Week. It seems to me that, like Earth Day, it’s something you should be mindful of every day and you shouldn’t need special activities to remind you that it’s important to use less, waste less and recycle as much as possible.

But apparently there are more than 300 events scheduled across the UK to get people thinking more about recycling, and in particular there’s a focus on diverting textiles like old clothing from landfills. Coca-Cola even got in on the act with a giant, crop circle style public service announcement/advertisement made out of old aluminum cans.

About 34 percent of UK household waste is recycled (by comparison, the recycling rate is 55 percent in New York City and a whopping 70 percent in San Francisco, according to a study by Waste and Recycling News), so maybe a bit more awareness is a very good thing in Britain.

And it’s likely most of us don’t do all we could to keep things out of the landfill, such as keeping hold of our water bottles and soda cans we use while out and about until we can recycle them at home, or always being mindful of recycling paper at the office. Maybe it would be worth it to take some time this Recycle Week to think about how you could be a better recycler, and maybe consume a little less so that there isn’t as much going into the waste stream from your home as there used to be.

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The Beauty of the Planet

June 17, 2009 · Filed under green living · Tagged

Sometimes it’s so easy to get caught up in the daily details of life, even when some of those details are ecoish, that we almost forget what we’re doing it for. But a sunset during a rain storm the other night reminded me of a few things.
sunset

I care about the planet because I want my kids and their kids to be able to see cool stuff like this. Because this world is so amazing, and even if there are others out there that can support life, there probably isn’t another one as cozy as this. So we all need to do what we can to make sure this one stays livable for as long as possible.

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