Fifty-Five - Spring Cleaning + Online Resources + a little less paper

This is a hodgepodge week. I don't feel like each one in itself is good for a week, but all of these are things we did not do/utilize last year.

Swaps
The clothing swap was a fabulous event and I am loving my new threads. I also wanted to shout out a couple of resources that we have signed up for accounts online that have helped us to give and get cool secondhand stuff.

Twins Cities Free Market - Powered by Eureka! Recycling. It's a lot like the free section from Craiglists. People giving away a lot of furniture, household items, some bikes, toys, anything! You can also great listings for things in good condition that you want to get rid of. 

Freecycle Network - Guthrie and I just picked up a humidifier on this cite. Something we wanted all winter, but with some patience and timing, we will have one for next winter that was free, in the 'hood, and did not end up in a landfill just because someone didn't need it anymore (they are moving away to better winters). Not only can you search and browse what people are giving away, but you can also request items. 

Connecting with our Community - Online
Guthrie and I are finding some great new ways of being in touch with our community. While living in Atlanta, there was a message board for people who lived in the neighborhood where I worked. I joined the group to help aid in projects for Everyday Leaders, the service-learning after school club I facilitated. Here in Minneapolis there is a very cool online resource called E-Democracy -- a site for local politics and action in Minnesota. It's like an online "town hall". Read more about its mission here. We are in the group dedicated to all things Powderhorn. Like any online group, you can receive messages a little or as much as you want--I get nice email digest once a day at 3 pm and click on the posts that are relevant to mean. Guthrie and I learned about the Take Back the Night Vigil, PoHo events, info related to Powderhorn 365, history about our neighborhood, and general requests. We also recently made a request for compost and a neighborhood who is unable to garden this year due to housework has generously donated to us and Paradise Garden.

Along Chicago -- Main Street Market

Powderhorn 365
I realized last week we have not mentioned this. Guthrie got involved in this project last summer when looking on Flickr for photo groups related to PoHo. The project is awesome. Each day of the week a photographer is assigned to take one photo within the neighborhood and post it to the blog. There are more than one photo per day on the Flickr account, but the blog gives a very nice running history of the blog. It celebrates the people and businesses that are from Lake to 38th, Chicago to Cedar. Guthrie is sometimes featured as a "guest" photographer on the days that the regulars are unable to fulfill their duties. Look at his work for this year here. At the end of the year, a book is created of the 365 photos. They are for purchase online at the website as well. Guthrie has met some cool neighbors through this project and some, including Guthrie, are going to documenting the work at the Paradise Community garden this summer.

Check Register
Guthrie just announced today as he was balancing the check book that we need a new register, but we don't have any more in the drawer. Sadly, my first instinct was to do what we would normally do, order more. But then I said, I'm sure we can do this on the computer. Sure enough, Microsoft Excel has check register workbooks. It's great because we can categorize as we go for budgeting and it does the math for us. I know this is simple and almost silly, but it's a good reminder how there are still so many little changes we can make.

Alright, all of those little things make up our 55th post. Peace!

Fifty-One - Bulk Buying Paper through Eureka Recycling

Over the last couple of years in grad school, even with printing double sided and reading articles online when possible, we have used a lot of paper. Eureka Recycling has a biannual bulk buy of 100% post consumer recycled paper that is process chlorine-free available for discount from what you would pay anywhere else. You buy by the case (10 reams) and can split with households or keep it all yourself. We'll be splitting with a friend. This is posted early because you need to order by Thursday, April 7. There is also colored paper and paper with three-holed punched, and cardstock.

Forty-Three - Wine Corks

 

This is a special Valentine's Day post. When you purchase your wine, keep in mind the kind of cork it uses. Of course you can recycle the bottle, but what about the cork? I learned through the Cork Forest Conservation Alliance that cork trees are not cut down to harvest cork, and that you can recycle cork. I also learned that it takes more than 10 times the energy to make a screw cap over the cork cap, and it is lined with plastic (bpa?). Also, the plastic stoppers are made from petro-chemicals, where are not biodegradable and produce more than 10 times the greenhouse gases in its production. Guthrie and I are making a commitment to buy wine with natural cork. It's easy to tell if the bottle is a screw cap, but not so easy to know if the stopper is plastic or cork. However, we are making note of our favorite wines with natural cork and are going to stick with what we know. We are also collecting our corks and will bring them to Whole Foods for their recycling program partnered with Cork Reharvest. Cheers!

Peace!

Forty-Two - Greener Cookware

The cheap pots and pans laura and I have had for over the last 5 or 6 years have been beat up, scratched up, and, for a long time, have shown signs of teflon peeling as the non-stick coating gradually dissolves while under the duress of extreme heat. These pots and pans are made with a man-made material called polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) AKA Teflon, which has been shown to corrode and emit toxic vapors when under high heat over extened uses. Another man-made material, Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) or 'C8', has been used for many years to make pots and pans. A third substance used to create this cookware is petroleum which has America by the cojones to this day, even amongst growing sentiment against its use.

These materials have been lauded for their ability to repel oil, grease and water and, in general, make cooking easier for us. These materials have also been showing up in our bodies at greater amounts over the years especially over seas in countries that are using second-hand cookware at extreme heat for long periods of time. Dupont an avid user of PFOAs and PTFEs for a long time settled a class-action lawsuit with the Washington, WV community recently over abundance of PFOAs in the drinking water of the residents. This has led to 3 epidemiologists studying the level and impact of PFOAexposure on the health of Americans. The results of this ongoing study will be available this year.

Laura and I are green, no doubt about it. We want to know the story behind the goods we use; we want to know why a certain process is used and the materials used during that process to make products we buy. We are happy knowing that community members and epidemiologists are scrutinizing what we put into our bodies enough so that it is putting pressure on scientists to evaluate the materials used to making cookware more user-friendly while limiting the negative impacts to our health.

We are also pleased that the the handle of the 8" skillet is made of 70% recycled steel and the surface hard-anodized so it won't scratch. Plus, the skillet is versatile; it's oven safe up to 500 degrees which limits the amount of pans we use to cook and therefore have to wash, saving us time and energy.

Next up, we will be replacing our two large stock pots with one that is made from recylced materials.

Cheers!

Plastic Recycling Update

For those in South who do not want to drive to the Eastside Co-op, Jacob's Well Church has a drop site on Sundays (you can drop and run) that will do their own deliver to the Eastside Co-op for you! Check out their posting on that here.

Thirty-Seven - No Impact Week: Trash

On the list for today:

1. Empty your trash bag from yesterday. Separate items into two piles-- stuff you used for more than ten minutes and stuff you used for less than ten minutes.

More than ten minutes:
Some yarn bits (non-compostable), some food bits (things the worms don't like), non-recyclable food, plastic stuff, and packaging material in Guthrie's home brew kit. 

Less than ten minutes:
dental floss
non-recyclable cardboard piece from my no-scratch fabric "kitty gate" project with glue guns bits on it.

We are supposed to evaluate how that makes us feel. Good, I guess, but I'm not too surprised. We don't usually have much trash. Composting is amazing (though we have had a horrible fruit fly problem and our worms are banished to the basement with jars of apple cider vinegar until they get that straightened out. We just started composting again after a couple month break :(

We will still keep our trash and collect it with us as we go through the day. We are not counting what we recycle, since this is to get people to look at what they are throwing away and what they can actually recycle.

2. Put together a no-trash travel kit. Done and done. We already take reusable water bottles, coffee/tea mugs/tumblers, forks, spoons, handkerchiefs, glass leftover food containers, reusable bags, etc with us. If you aren't, you should too.

3. Stop making trash :) The three Rs again: reduce, reuse, recycle. This is where our change comes into play. Guthrie and I are excited to have discovered through a friend that the Eastside Food Co-op on Central in NE has a great plastic recycling program! We will be saving all of our plastic and recycling it at the Coop when we have a big enough load. Here's the deal:

Rinse, sort by number (and some by color), and save the plastic and bring to the Co-op on Thursdays 3-7 pm or Saturdays 10-2pm. All items must have a number.

They accept #1-7!!  

#1 - need to separate clear from color

#2 - need to natural from color

No foam (#6) or prescription bottles (usually #5) - though read on for info on how to recycle these. 

I also copied some of their info from their FAQs:

-------------

Q. Why don’t you accept foam? It’s marked with a #6 PS.

A. Foam is EXPANDED Polystyrene (EPS), and it behaves differently than Polystyrene in re-processing, so we cannot accept foam. There are machines that can reprocess EPS, but none available for the post consumer market in the Twin Cities at this time.

Q. Why don’t you accept unmarked lids? I’ve heard that Aveda does? 

A. Aveda doesn't accept unmarked lids either.  What they do accept is rigid plastic caps.  Click here to learn more:http://www.aveda.com/aboutaveda/caps.tmpl

Q. Why don’t you accept prescription bottles? They are marked with a #5. I’ve heard the Humane Society takes them – why don’t you?

A. Even our recycler doesn’t know why prescription bottles are a recycling no-no, but they are. We can’t take them. We’ve heard that the Humane Society re-uses prescription bottles. The labels must be soaked off, the bottles must be thoroughly cleaned and dried, and they must be delivered to the Humane Society with the lids intact. We encourage our patrons to do that independently of this program.

-------------

Okay, back to the list. 

4. Reflect on our trash each day at the end of the day. So, for today:
Not as much, because we ate leftovers that were already cooked. The 2010 calendar Guthrie got for free last year with orange peels (the worms don't like them as much as we are not food recycling in the outdoor compost bin since it is full and we need to address getting a new one in spring, so we are only saving no food waste compostables that don't go with the worms (another post for another day).

5. Be proud of your efforts and write down five things we are grateful for:

   1. Family
   2. Food / Farmers :)
   3. Friends
   4. Kitties when they sleep through the night (done with the Fs)
   5. That Laura only has one more semester of grad school left :)

Peace!

Recycling Update

One of our CFLs finally died. :( We've had them for a long, long time. But now were wondering -- what do we do with them? Turns out, it's illegal to throw them in the trash due to mercury. Here is a write-up from the City of Minneapolis' website (which we linked in our blog post on our recycling center).


"Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFL) can now be recycled at Menard’s or Home Depot. Only CFL are accepted. It is illegal to throw CFL’s in the garbage due to the presence of a small amount of mercury. For more information on your recycling options, visit: www.minnesota.earth911.org or http://www.pca.state.mn.us/"


Peace!

The No-Impact Project - Starting January 3rd

Guthrie and I are signing up to participate in the next round of the No Impact Project. It is the "one week carbon cleanse". It models what NYC writer Colin Beavan did with his family for a year -- slowly look at different aspects of their lives (waste, water, electricity, transportation, etc) and made systematic changes to lower their impact. His book No Impact Man has been turned into a movie with the same name. On his website, he invites you to do the same for one week. The great thing is that it starts on specific dates so that you can connect with others in your area who are doing the same. They make it real easy with a how-to manual on what to do on each day plus interesting facts. Obviously, you do what you can; making any change is a positive one. What Colin found out was that during the course of the year, he lost weight, had more energy, reconnected with his wife, spent more time with his family, and was genuinely happier. Guthrie and I will participate in this to learn some new things that we can incorporate into our lives. 

Join with us -- maybe we can meet up for a candlelit dinner of local food! :)

Peace! 

Nineteen - Tennis Balls

I've been playing tennis a lot more than normal over the last couple of months and have wondering what to do with all of the spent tennis balls. I came across Green Eco Services, a website that details what to do with those garbage prone balls. Here are some great ideas from the site:

• Rebounces is an organization that will go so far as to pay shipping costs for you to send them your used tennis balls for recycling and refurbishing
• Donate to dog shelters, schools and/or Boys and Girls Clubs
• Use as a door stop
• Use as a car marker in the garage to know when to stop
• Cut in half to use as a can opener
• Cut in half to use for stationary supplies

Over 300 million tennis balls are manufactured each year. These balls contribute to 19,000 tons of non-biodegradable junk that litters our landfill. Knowing this, Laura and I will now be putting tennis balls in the dryer to ward off static cling, and it will save on drying time as it helps keep the clothes separate.

Keep the tennis balls in play!

Recycling Update - Tom's of Maine!

We have been using Tom's of Maine toothpaste for awhile now, but we have always been throwing the tube away when we are done. Another benefit of using Tom's is that it does come in a recyclable metal tube. Just cut it open, rinse, recycle, and repeat!

Compact Fluorescent Lights

After patenting a high pressure vapor light in 1927, Friedrich Meyer, Hans J. Spanner and Edmund Germer applied to create the first commercial fluorescent bulb in the early 1930s. This application was soon purchased by GE for $180,000, who commercialized the first fluorescent light in 1938 (US patent 2182732).

In 1976, a GE engineer by the name of Edward E. Hammer created the first compact fluorescent light (CFL) as a response to the oil crisis. The commercialization of the product was stalled due to exorbitant facility costs for production as well as manufacturing issues with design of the interior coating of the spiral glass. Not until 1995 did the first CFL manufactured in China become available to the public. Sales of the CFL have increased every year since its inception, but still remain more costly than their ignorant cousin, the incandescent light (IL). This has to do with the electronic ballast.

The electronic ballast varies depending on the starting power of the CFL. The three common ballasts are instant start, rapid start and programmed start. The latter is best used in business settings as it lasts longer during frequent power cycling, the rapid start is used best in settings with dimmer switches (IMPORTANT since using a regular CFL in this setting will diminish its longevity) and the instant start is used best in settings where lights are not turned on or off often. For your edification, LEDs are another highly efficient alternative to incandescent lights.

CFLs use up to a 75% less energy and last up to 10 times as long as the IL. So, the initial savings from an IL doesn’t last long (much like the IL itself). Over the life of a CFL compared to that of an IL, you will save, depending on the varying cost of electricity per kWh, anywhere from $30-$45 a light.

According to the same site, if everyone used CFLs, we could save over $700 million in energy costs, retire 90 power plants and stop a half-ton of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere.

It’s important to know that CFLs contain 5 milligrams of mercury in each CFL, regardless of shape, size or color. This amount is miniscule compared to the average 25 milligrams in a watch battery or the 500 milligrams in an amalgam dental filling. Nonetheless, this can pose a hazard to you or your pets if they break open and any of the insides are ingested. (See EPAs website on how to clean up broken CFL(s)) There are now new low-mercury CFL models such as the Alto and the Neolite which have 1 milligram of mercury.

Because of the mercury content and to be eco-friendly, CFL recycling is important. Do not throw them in the garbage! Menards and Home Depot have CFL recycling programs at all of their Minnesota stores. Also, here is a list of Minnesota household hazardous waste collection programsas well as county contact info.

Fourteen - Recycling Cards

We all get cards -- birthday, wedding, get well, congratulatory, etc. After our wedding, I saved all our cards because I felt like it was such a waste to dispose of them. I use to be a person that saved just about every card I was given, but this isn't very practical either.

So, if you get a wedding card, birthday card, shower card, etc in the near future from Guthrie or myself, if it seems a little DIY, it is, and know that the money we saved (sometimes around $5 for the eco, recycled paper, give money to women in Africa, etc cards) will now go into to getting you a better gift! :)

I try to send electronic birthday cards, though sadly, they are not as in vogue and seem like the easy way out or actually sending someone a card. I think they can be more fun to personalize and sometimes take even more time. Plus, who doesn't like an interactive card? You can look a it a few times, but once your birthday has come and gone, you usually just throw away the card anyway, right? Deleting the email is a lot more eco. Here is some info from RecycleWorks.org on holiday cards alone:

- 2.65 billion Christmas cards are sold each year in the US -- enough to fill a football field 10 stories high!
- if we each sent one less card, we'd save 50,000 cubic yards of paper

So, the next time you need a card, think about going electronic or recycling some materials you already have. That's what we are going to do!

Peace!

Garage Sales & Car Rental - Two Unrelated Tips

Just a note - since it is garage sale season, make sure you go and check them out. Guthrie and I needed a little radio/CD player for the kitchen since we can't really hear the news while we're cooking. Stumbled upon one in working order for $2 and I found a wonderful house dress for $5. We also got our garden rake from a garage sale. Though we didn't find the TV antenna and someone else bought the desk chair out from under us, it was fun and a great way to keep things (that you need/want around the house) out of the landfill.

Also, Guthrie and I just had to rent out first car for our anniversary trip to Austin, TX. Though very liberal by Texas standards, they did just get their first train. We got the smallest car we could and are also trying to offset our carbon footprint through this program offered by Enterprise. Here's what they say at Enterprise:
-----------------------------------------------

Greenhouse Gas Emissions Offset

Enterprise Rent-A-Car is pleased to offer you the opportunity to benefit the environment by offsetting greenhouse gas emissions generated by a rental vehicle.

For just $1.25 you can offset emissions produced by the average rental. The money will go to TerraPass to fund certified offset projects that work to remove carbon from the atmosphere.

What's more, we will match these customer contributions dollar-for-dollar up to $1 million dollars.

-----------------------------------------------

Peace!

Six - Garden

I have a black thumb and Guthrie has two regular thumbs, though neither of us really know much about gardening. My first experience was with a community garden in which I mostly learned that I know zero about gardening. The following year, Guthrie's and my first together, we cut out a little patch in the shared backyard of his apartment. Since we knew we would be leaving for Atlanta mid-summer, we were limited on what we could grow. We planned better and were able to harvest many salads with our lettuce and beautiful edible flowers. In Atlanta, with so much moving and so little green space, we tried once at a potted tomato plant only to have it come down with blight.

This summer, sadly, we are have missed the first couple months already due to the move. Honestly, it's a blessing in disguise because it has helped to stop me from getting too excited about gardening -- my problem before. I wanted to try and plant everything, anywhere I could. This summer, we will start with some pots on the balcony, a small raised bed, and a couple of house plants. If we can handle that, we will be ready to expand next year.

First of all, my gardening bible has been a book some friends gave us as a wedding gift: Garden Anywhere by Alys Fowler. It's amazing! It has topics about indoor plants, dumpster diving, grocery store gardening (like growing an avocado from seed after making guacamole -- this is our baby), you name it! She is a master urban garden with a very sustainable and DIY mentality.

With garden, we started off with planting some herbs for our cute, sunny balcony. It's windy up there, but it's right off of the kitchen, making it a great spot for getting fresh ingredients while cooking. I hate buying fresh herbs at the store: 1. they are super expensive and 2. they are always packaged in so much plastic that you can't recycle. We have now fixed that problem. We bought them from the Gardens of Eagan at the Midtown Farmers Market. For the herbs, we planted cilantro, chives, basil, thyme, rosemary, and pineapple mint. Guthrie picked out the last one :)

Second, I wanted to start small backyard garden, which is hard to do when renting. The solution -- raised bed. They can be removed when you leave, though maybe the next tenants may want it to stay! The wood was recycled wood, old pieces from sister's deck, actually. I found eight pieces (2x6) that were roughly the same size and four that we about the same size as well for the posts. It honestly was my first real experience with a drill. It wasn't anything fancy, and there are many DIY blog posts and YouTube videos that show you how to make nicer ones. I just wanted to wing it, and I think I did a fine job. To fill it, I mixed good organic topsoil with manure 50/50. We planted two tomato plants from the farmers market (determinant -- good for the small garden) and some organic bush beans which we sowed from seeds. I'll post updates as the garden grows.

Hopefully something will grow! Happy gardening! Peace!

Five - Recycling Center

Recycling is a fine thing to do. However, as your city continually tries to maximize its profits, it is getting more and more time consuming to adhere to the rules set forth by your city.

For the city of Minneapolis to pick up your recycling nowadays you have to be a determined one. Costs of processing recyclables are constantly rising and the driver is the same person that picks up your recyclables and placing them in separate containers, so you need to adhere to the rules completely if you want your stuff picked up . For example, if you don't use paper bags you will need to use your own properly labeled bins (see pictures). In order to get the right stickers, you must call up the City of Minneapolis Solid Waste and Recycling Department and order them. If you are an avid newspaper reader or have just moved in you will have to tie your stuff in twine in order for it to be acceptable.

According to the Solid Waste and Recycling site, Minneapolis began its recycling program in 1982, serving roughly 32,000 households, picking up over 1,000 tons of clear glass, used motor oil and batteries, newspapers and aluminum cans once a month. In 1988, separate collection of yard waste began for composting purposes and in 1993 the city delivered over 250 composters to those eager households interesting in composting.

The city contracted out its recycling services initially with Minneapolis Refuse, Inc taking over in 1989. In 2005, BFI took over the contract for processing and marketing the city's recyclables from BFO. In 2003, the city approved the collection of school food waste to be used as compost throughout the city.

The cost to the user to recycle has varied over the years. In 1989, the cost to a user was $12/month/unit going up to $22.25/month/unit in 2005 with a $7 recycling credit/month/unit.

 If you improperly recycle something, the city will not take it from you and will instead leave a yellow tag with instruction on how to properly recycle. Even with this, however, it is confusing to know what can and cannot be recycled. The Solid Waste and Recycling Department has a What to Do List web page that's quite informative and list pretty much anything you could possibly come across.  If you have yard waste there the City of Minneapolis has a web site detailing how to properly dispose of your waste. If you have large items such as appliances, first, see if someone you know could use it, otherwise, check out this web page for details on how to properly dispose of the items.

Happy Recycling!