What’s in your trash?

This time of year is the perfect time of year to think about how much trash you produce considering most Americans are gearing up for their annual end of year spend and waste orgy.  The Change the World Challenge from Reduce Footprints this week asked to keep your trash in site; rather than carry the bag around with me I dutifully logged my trash for the week.  Although I ate out more than I typically do, I ended up using and throwing away items that have simple, reusable alternatives like tissues, napkins, paper towels, and to-go containers.  I’ve finally gotten into the habit of taking cloth bags everywhere so now I just need to remember to bring my own to go containers, napkins, and handkerchiefs.

How Many Light Bulbs Do You Need?

For this week’s Change the World challenge please remove a light bulb from a fixture with multiple bulbs.  For example, in our ceiling fans we have one out of three sockets filled (with compact fluorescents of course).  At work I am fortunate enough to have a south facing window, so on sunny days I don’t use my overhead light.  If you’re up to it, join the challenge and spread the word; for more ideas check out the honor roll.

 

Weekly Green Challenge (triple dose)

Last week’s challenge was to give your car some loving, and below I’ve given couple of simple and obvious suggestions.  Check out the honor roll for more ideas.

With the time change and checking your smoke detectors’ batteries, you should also think about getting the car a tune up.  In addition to saving gas money, routine maintenance will either help you over the 200,000 mile threshold or help you get a better trade-in credit.  Of course keeping the air filter and oil changed is important, but also be sure to have the tires rotated and their pressure checked.  Proper tire inflation helps with their wear and your gas mileage.

Our household is into our sixty-second week of being a one car household!  With our one year milestone and our return from walking hilly San Francisco, we decided to park the car one day a week.  If you have public transit, use it!  Not only will it reduce your footprint, but you are also providing a good job to someone in your community and decreasing the congestion for someone else.

This week’s challenge to have zero food waste is second nature for me, thanks to my mom’s super frugal habits.  Dinners’ leftovers became either lunch or a late night snack, and I carry on the tradition in our home.  If I don’t eat it, my husband will most likely throw it in a burrito wrapper with cheese to finish it off.  My biggest problem with food waste are those ingredients I buy to make special recipes then fail to incorporate into our weekly meal plans.  This week I have a portion of cream cheese left over from the super awesome peanut butter chocolate cake I made for our wedding anniversary, but other recipes include my favorite golden sesame tofu that leaves me with pineapple juice or the plethora of recipes that call for just egg whites or egg yolks.

Regarding the reclaimed or recycled challenge, I did go for Marcal’s Small Steps because it was half the cost of the Seventh Generation pack, and I don’t mind it (and my honey hasn’t complained yet either).  Thanks for your thoughts!

Climate Change

The facts supporting climate change have been widely reported across numerous media outlets; I wanted to post this to add one more blog to the list in support of making drastic changes to our lifestyles.

Climate change is just one of the many ills our society suffers because of our addiction with fossil fuels.  Looking for purportedly cheap coal, we send fellow citizens to work in coal mines; once the vein dies or becomes too expensive, we raze the mountains and dump the top into the surrounding valleys creating wastelands in lieu of forested habitats.  Those stream beds supply someone’s water somewhere in the chain are then filled with poisons and waste from the mining, and during rainy years like this one the fills can create huge landslides (which if it doesn’t kill you isn’t covered under a homeowner’s policy).

Our love of the automobile has lead us to build massive expanses of blacktop.  The power of the car has allowed us to move further and further from work and commercial centers which leads to more traffic congestion then demand for less congested roadways.  The fuel for these vehicles will not last forever, and even if it did, its exhaust is killing us.  Furthermore is the fuel worth the national security risk; what would the economy do if for whatever crazy reason OPEC decided to stick it to us tomorrow?  Public transportation was squashed by domestic automakers, and many people still argue public transportation will never be self-sustaining (thanks for a good jab, Doug Gibson!).  Funny how the sweetheart lease deals we make with big oil doesn’t impugn them.  However, as our population grows the stress on the current roadways will increase while the demand for housing increases, and no one wants to live near the noise and smell of major roadway.

Our food is tied closely to energy prices because almost everything Americans eat is soaked in oil starting from the time the seeds are delivered from Monsanto to their drive to your home in plastic bags in the back of your car.  If you are eating processed foods then you have even more oil on your hands not to mention the spare tire around your middle.

Even if our elected officials refuse to act, we can each do something small like grow some food, bring your own boxes and bags to the store, do without the car, or insulate your home.  These little things when compounded will help, but a phone call or email to elected officials can’t hurt.

Recycling, Composting, Worms, and More

Before recycling was so widespread and typical, my parents supplemented our family’s income by recycling our glass at the old Ball plant, and my dad collected aluminum cans to exchange for cash at Biltmore Metal.  This early exposure ensured that recycling has always been second nature.  My work study was campus recycling coordinator, which was a nice inflated title for the dirty work of sorting recycling on a college campus (albeit a small one).  I’ve started the bin at every place that I have worked, and I still remind my colleagues to recycle (even though they have to pass the bin on their way to the main trash can).  With our recycling at home, we produce a bag of trash a week thanks to the cat litter, and my honey drives two trash cans and a printer box of shredded and mixed paper once a month to the recycling center on the North side of town.  Although we could have the recycling picked up, we would have to put it in a disposable blue plastic bag.  I have lobbied the Hendersonville Rd Earth Fare (the “healthy” grocery store) to replace the recycling trailer that used to reside there (incidentally, the old Ball plant used to stand there too), but they advised the annual cost, $60,000, is more than they wish to spend.  With the mark up on everything in that store, surely they could spare that much a year!

Composting, on the other hand, scared me.  It seemed gross with a huge potential to become a mess and an attractive nuisance for rodents and vermin.  My mom started a compost bin one summer, and it really stank.  It also become a bee hive, for yellow jackets.  Once I did some reading my worries were assuaged, and when we moved into our first apartment (a duplex with a yard and flower beds!) together we started a compost bin.  The first bin did succumb to my inherent laziness, but it was far enough away from the windows and the neighbors to not bother anyone.  The fencing I installed did little to keep the neighbor’s dog from eating scraps, but it did make turning it difficult.  Our current pile is a free form pile on the ivy covered far bank of the drainage ditch stream that divides our little lot.  It doesn’t smell even though it almost never gets turned, and I cannot figure out why.  However, the soil on the bottom is the prettiest, blackest soil.  We used copious amounts to amend the soil of our shared victory garden last year, and we grew some awesome herbs, tomatoes, arugula, and cantaloupes.  We don’t put any cooked food in, but it does get plenty of peelings, leaves, twigs, and grass clippings.

I am also interested in starting a worm bin to produce house plant food as well as worms for the compost pile.  I have been mulling over the worm bin for about a year or so, so maybe by the end of this calendar year I will have one going.  I will even post photos of its supplies and construction, which will hopefully goad those with limited space into starting some form of composting.

As we all know, recycling is one only part of the environmental trinity.  Reducing and reusing come first.  The first part of this post address last week’s Change the World Challenge from Small Footprints, and this second part is in response to the current challenge.  Think about all of the things you have plugged in that draw phantom loads, or even worse all things that you might leave on when you leave a room.  When we were kids, my parents were always harping about leaving lights on when we left the room, but now when I visit my mom I’m the one walking through cutting all of the televisions and lights off.  I call my husband a Progress Energy agent (after our local power plant) for his habit of cutting on a light in every room.

When the computer isn’t going to be used for over two hours, we turn it off, but otherwise we sleep it (I use the same standard at work for my lunch break or when I have to be in the field, always turning the monitors off).  When we are listening to music, we sleep the computer screen (our Mac has one power button which is why we don’t turn the monitor off).  We do not use standby mode for our DVD player, and we always turn the TV and the cable box off.  One thing we failed to consider when we purchased our dishwasher is that every time you open the door, the display comes on and it stays on for a several minutes; even with this irksome feature, it still had a strong Engery Star rating.  The best thing about power strips is that you can unplug all of the appliances with one fell swoop, thereby eliminating the phantom loads from several appliances all at once.  Although the appliance with the largest phantom load, our computer, we have a battery back up due to the numerous power surges our area experiences so it cannot be unplugged (it will beep).  We do be sure to always unplug the phone charger as soon as the phone is charged; not only does it suck plenty of power, it can be a fire hazard.  Although my parents always unplugged everything when we went out of town, it is a habit that I have fallen out of so I will endeavor to bring the tradition back for our travels.

Small steps and changes add up to bring big changes in our lives, especially when we add up all the small steps our friends and neighbors are taking.  A few years ago a peak power plant was proposed, but community outcry shut it down.  By reducing our electricity consumption, especially during peak hours, we can help prevent the need for another power plant.  One of the cheapest ways to reduce your consumption is a clothesline; the line itself was about fifteen dollars (but if you don’t opt for retractable one that I did for ease of installation you could probably put a line up for less than ten dollars) plus a few dollars for braces and extra clothes pins. Check out  250 Megawatts of Community Action; I am lobbying my husband to change our rate plan to the peak power plan, but thus far he isn’t convinced.  At least we’ll be unplugging those power strips on our next trip.

Forty-Five Weeks!

We are at forty-five weeks with the one car household, and we are going strong.  We are now trying to decide how to celebrate the upcoming one year anniversary, and this week’s Change the World Wednesday Challenge from Small Footprints at Reduce Footprints is to park the car for twenty-four hours.  With our household, the car normally doesn’t get parked that long unless we are out of town.  My hope is that we can both use alternate means of transportation at least three times in the upcoming calendar week.  The humidity and no showers at work make this difficult, but if we ever hope to have a better public transportation system we have to use what we have and demand better.

Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs

The current (almost over) Change the World Wednesday challenge is to replace at least one incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent bulb.  I can pat myself on the back with this one as when we rented we changed the bulbs, and in our second place we actually left them for the next tenants.  Last year or so we reduced most of our fixtures down to one bulb (e.g., the bathroom vanity lights and the ceiling fans) as we really didn’t need all the excess light.  Over the several years we’ve been using them we have replaced (due to burning out) less than five; I do have a complaint: in the winter our outdoor lights take several minutes to warm up to full luminescence.  However, their operating cost and environmental benefits well out weigh this complaint.  Just a note that all fluorescent bulbs contain mercury so take care when disposing.  In our area, the local fire departments will accept fluorescent bulbs, and I believe Home Depot will do the same nationwide.

Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle

Last week’s Change the World Wednesday challenge from Reduce Footprints really got me thinking about how many plastic bags I use without even noticing them.  I hate getting them at the store but only at the checkout line; when I’m in the produce or bulk section I think about how much I need to get reusable bags, especially for the mushrooms, but week after week I use one or two new bags.  I do save and reuse the old ones, but those thin produce bags tear if you look at them wrong so I usually only get one or two uses.  I do better with the zip top sandwich bags that I put herbs in, and for the heavy bulk (rice, beans, tofu, etc) I bring some plastic storage containers.

Single use bags are just plain bad.  Americans waste about 12 million barrels of oil annually in the production of plastic bags, and if you use paper, we harvest about 14 million trees each year.  Aside from being a waste of a valuable, finite resource, plastic bags are here to stay.  Like the bag scene in American Beauty, they float and fly and land in trees and in the water.  Once in water they can resemble prey causing some obvious issues for the unlucky predator.  Even if the bags don’t retain their original shape, once they get into the water they flock; the Northern Pacific Garbage Patch is bigger than Texas.  To help protect their seascapes, several coastal North Carolina counties are thinking of joining the growing global ban (as reported on Morning Edition last week or so).  A few of the local green grocers (Earth Fare, French Broad Food Coop, and with Greenlife leading the way) began to charge for plastic bags this year, and even if the stores didn’t want to charge, couldn’t they give a credit like Earth Fare used to that the shopper can donate to a charity (which both decreases single use bag usage and gets the company a tax deduction).

Paper at least breaks down when thrown away, and all of our textbook covers were repurposed grocery bags.  However, paper still wastes plenty of resources.  Some of those trees may be old growth stands while others could be from GMO tree plantations, but either way a whole bunch of trees go down.   The GMO trees for paper production are being selected for less lignin which makes them easier to process.  The issue is that lignin makes trees strong (literally it fills the spaces between the cells’ walls), and it also helps the tree conduct water efficiently (sounds like a recipe for more less efficient water usage and increased pesticides).  On the carbon side, it also plays an important role in carbon sequestration.  Even if you recycle your bags a great deal of energy is used to do so (in both transporting and processing).

My organic cotton bags have another one up on plastic and paper: they hold pounds more.  Two bags can easily handle a week’s worth of groceries (I usually keep the delicates, like bread & fruit, in their own bag).  On the downside, baggers at the Ingles are so used to flimsy plastic bags that might hold ten pounds, I bag my own groceries which saves Ingles on labor costs (I avoid the stupid robo-checkouts) as they will invariably use half the bag then resort to plastic.

This weekend I will make or buy some reusable bags for my bulk items so I cut the plastic bags out all together.

Weekly Green Challenge (aka Change the World Wednesday)

Small Footprints over at Reduce Footprints has targeted one of my numerous pet peeves with this week’s Change the World Wednesday Challenge; a more informative (and ranty!) post is forthcoming on why the question shouldn’t be paper or plastic at the check out line.  Our household will be striving to remember to bring the reusable bags to every trip to the store.  Hope you’ll do the same!

One Car Household Week 40!

Frankly, I am a bit shocked that we have made it this far without seriously thinking about buying another car.  We have not had one conversation about even looking at cars aside from some day dreaming in which we get some fast and nimble little car that I can haul ass up and down back country roads (and in this fantasy I could so without endangering anyone, getting a ticket, or  wasting gas).  From the onset my honey has sacrificed the most by riding the bus and walking more than I have, but this week I have walked and/or rode the bus in five out of eight commutes!  My calves are singing in that good muscle building way, and I like to think I am getting less winded than when I started around Strive not to Drive.  Another benefit is that the stress that builds in my shoulders, arms, and wrists from typing all day seems to disperse by the time I get home; I don’t know if it is the endorphines or increased blood flow, but I certainly appreciate it.  I even walked home in the rain and stayed dry (although I have yet to try Beth’s bubble umbrella idea).