Globally Green Living

Shari Elf from Good and Sturdy Art is my new hero! She’s into scoping out garage sales and thrift stores for her art pieces and her husband is into it too. She has been so successful doing what she loves that the last I heard she was charging $125 dollars an hour.

This particular piece uses trash such as old wine corks and scrabble pieces. She has all kinds of unique and fun pieces so if you get a chance check out her Good and Sturdy Art website.

She is not only an artist but also a musician and I love her quirky sense of humor. It brought back some bittersweet memories of my dad. He used to create these beautiful lamps and clocks out of bits and pieces he would find at garage sales. He also painted and was in a band so he and Shari would have got along.

If it was a decent day he would always be up early and off to the garage sales. I loved when I got to go with him. It was like a giant treasure hunt and we had so many laughs. One time he asked this prissy woman if her dog was a potbelly pig. I guess it was some fancy breed and she was highly insulted but I couldn’t help but laugh.

People sell the strangest things but you can find some very cool one of a kind things at garage sales or thrift stores. I have a lovely painting of a sunset and trees a man sold me for five dollars, a huge sturdy mirror that graces our entranceway for the same price and my kitchen curtain cost a whole dollar. I still have a gorgeous antique dresser dad refinished for me.

Anyway, I’m happy that Shari Elf is enjoying such success. She’s inspired me to continue with my own clumsy creations and shared some unique ways to recycle. She also sells her CD on her website entitled “I’m Forcing Goodness Upon You.”

She has definitely made me smile.

If you pledge to BYOB you can win $5,000 at c3.NewDream.Org. The contest is for U.S. residents only but thought I would spread the word anyway.

The New American Dream is a wonderful website with plenty of articles and information on environmental issues.

Bill McKibben, author and environmentalist, wrote an excellent article on keeping the holidays simple and inexpensive. He mentions being accused of being a Grinch, which is ironic since I just called myself that yesterday. Anyway, it’s called The Hundred Dollar Holiday and is worth checking out because he addresses other reasons to change Christmas besides damage to the environment. I can go along with needing more peace and solitude and less hustle and bustle and parties throughout the holidays. This doesn’t necessarily make me a Grinch. A bit of a recluse perhaps.

Anyway, back to bringing your own bag. If you’re the crafty type, you could always create your own. Although I’m into embroidery, I am not too talented on the sewing machine. It doesn’t look too tricky but think I need lessons because I keep busting the needles. Some people do make and sell tote bags that have pizazz. I suppose I could paint or embroider up a plain one.

I would prefer them to have a little personality and color such as Bags by Bernie. The bags vary in price and design but there is something for just about everyone. Prices range from $9.99 to $15.99, which seems reasonable for a personalized bag. There are some with flowers, cave art, birds, dogs, leaves and more. My favorite is this wolf bag which of course is sold out.

ReusableBags.com is offering 20% off for anyone who takes the BYOB pledge at c3.NewDream.org. Shown here is a handmade bag using recycled juice containers. It’s a very creative, practical and colorful way to recycle!

• If you want to read about shopping, see Sally’s take on “What I learned while shopping for a dress.”

50 million wireless phones are purchased over the holiday season according to ReCellular. That also means a lot of old phones are thrown out. Many people would like to recycle them but may not know how to go about it.

The “Use Less Stuff Report” said that recycling 50 million cell phones would be equivalent to 37.5 million gallons of gas. That is a lot of fuel! So what do we do with our old phones? You can go to ReCellular to trade your old phone in, get best buy digital dollars and benefit the environment. Half the broken phones are fixed and resold but the ones that can’t be saved are broken down and recycled. ReCellular was recently recognized as one of Inc. Magazine’s “Green 50” companies.

Verizon also has a national recycling program called “Call2Recycle™” that will take your rechargeable batteries and recycle them. Richard Karn or “Al” from Home Improvement is the spokesperson for Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation (RBRC).

If you just toss them away with your regular garbage, they can cause some serious damage to the environment so consider dropping your old ones off. It might not seem like much but if we all did that with one battery, we would be keeping tons of toxins out of our landfills.

I’m not big on cell phones but my older kids and husband are into them. I suppose they come in handy for emergencies but they’re not my ideal present. It’s funny how people buy you what they would actually want. I received a couple of cell phones over the years and my family ended up taking them over. I need to keep that in mind and make sure I know what everyone else would like and use.

• To read about a company that recycles underwear, check out Patagonia Urges Everyone to Recycle Underwear.

Bead for Life is a non-profit organization that helps eradicate poverty by supporting and training Ugandan women. They transfer recycled paper into beautiful beads giving themselves an income and helping the environment.

This triple swirl necklace that’s shown here is my favorite. It comes in five different colors and is only twenty dollars. They have been overwhelmed this year with their bead parties which include beaded jewelry, a DVD about the beaders, African recipes and price lists. It would be a fun party to have in the new year anyway since they’re booked up until then.

You can still buy individual pieces of jewelry or donate though. Read more about BeadforLife on their website. They have some inspiring stories and some beautiful beads.

Grâce Dotou founded her theatrical company in 1980 and called it “Qui dit Mieux” which means “Who can say it better”. They promote peace and concern for the environment through drama. Grâce was sick of seeing plastic bags strewn all over her neighborhood and decided to do something about it.

Now she and twenty other women in Benin crochet trash bags into dolls, scarves, handbags and place mats. Ten Thousand Villages sell Qui dit Mieux’s products and shown here is one of their recycled bag placemats.

Qui dit Mieux has expanded and now have 16 different workshops. NGOs have expressed interest and they continue to grow in other West African countries. In 2002, United Nations recognized Dotou with a Poverty Eradication Award. It’s amazing how the efforts of one person can expand and help the environment while providing income for many women.

Apparently, AMEC is building a plant to blast diapers into diesel fuel. They will be doing this through pyrolysis, which is also known as thermal cracking. The diapers will be heated up and broken down in a closed and oxygen free environment.

That’s a good thing because you wouldn’t want to let the fumes from thousands of diapers being heated to travel too far. Just a days worth of baby diapers is enough to knock you out. I remember saying to my husband, “That can’t be good for you.”

Big Diaper Supply for Fuel

There are plenty of dirty diapers to use in hospitals and they could contribute to the fuel conversion rather than sending the diapers to landfills. 30,000 tonnes of diapers will be initially converted, creating 11,000 tonnes of fuel and costing 50 cents a liter. (according to Canadian Press, Sidhartha Banerjee Mon Nov 19)

Cloth Diapers Versus Disposable

Using cloth diapers would keep more disposables out of landfills, but cloth diapers also require a lot of washing which uses plenty of energy and water. On the other hand, disposables can pollute the clean water that we have left. Cloth still seems the lesser of two evils for the environment, although not everyone has the luxury of a never-ending water supply. If there are no washing machines or Laundromats around, that also makes it challenging to use cloth diapers. The cloth/disposable diaper debate will continue, but it is good to know that some of them will be converted into fuel instead of heading to the dump.

Blue Rock Station built a beautiful sustainable earthship using cans, car tires, mud and straw. They used 1,200 tires to create the walls of their earthship and use the earth and the sun to naturally heat the home. I thought it sounded sort of like a fort we would build as kids but using tires filled with mud actually makes extremely strong walls. It’s a great way to recycle all those tires too.

Blue Rock Station offers tours of their 38 acre home and run workshops teaching people various alternative building techniques.

Besides the Earthship Blue Rock Station have gardens, llamas, goats and raise rare breed chickens. Their “chicken chalet” is made with beer bottles, straw bales and car tires.
Designer and architect Michael Reynolds created the first Earthship and there are now hundreds of them. Although some are in the desert they collect their own water and manage to have plenty for themselves and their plants. It seems like an attractive and exciting alternative and a great way to get back in touch with nature. See this clip for more information or check out Earthship.org.

I found this introduction to finding food behind grocery stores brought to you by the Freegan Chef. Also shown here is “Freegan Chef: Episode One” with Roberto Freddi and Niamh Scott showing us how to prepare a vegetarian meal. Their instructions and recipes were well done. It’s a good example of how much food goes to waste.

I thought the video from Patagonia was hilarious . Agent Timmy O’Neill (a famous rock climber and comedian) urges people to recycle their underwear to no avail until he meets the “The Undie Master” who gives him a magic tea made from ancient underwear, which gives him renewed strength and enables him to convince others to recycle. This helps decrease waste which contributes to reducing the effects of global warming.

Patagonia is onto something though and if we all recycled our garments there would be that much less in the landfill. Patagonia’s long-term goal is to take environmental responsibility for everything they make.

They launched their Common Threads Recycling Program in September 2005 but have recently expanded to include fleece garments and cotton tees. Recycling garments has resulted in an energy savings of 76% and a CO2 emissions reduction of 71%.

Besides only using organically grown cotton, Patagonia also uses soda bottles in their fleece garments.

Patagonia’s current campaign is to protect Arctic National Wildlife. Five dollars from each sale of their arctic wildlife shirt goes to Alaska Wilderness League.

“The Arctic Refuge coastal plain is the ecological heart and wildlife oasis of the entire refuge. It is, in the words of the naturalist Peter Matthiessen, ‘the earth’s last sanctuary of the great Ice Age fauna that includes . . . bears, gray wolves and wolverines, musk ox, moose, and, in the summer, the Porcupine River herd of caribou, 120,000 strong.’ Drilling the Arctic Refuge would not solve America’s energy crisis. To the contrary, drilling there would only continue, not reduce, our dependence on fossil fuels.”

–Tom Udall, U.S. Congressman, New Mexico, “A Family Legacy,”
Patagonia Fall 2007 Catalog

I just returned from Europe where American junk food is luxury food and where fast food places do recycle. Yes, it is true, McDonald’s does help the environment abroad. The particular McDonald’s I went to had different receptacles for trash and plastic. There was also a receptacle for used batteries like AAA and AA that are not recyclable. This latter one is what I miss the most in the U.S. I have a problem tossing used batteries in the trash. OK, I admit it, I have a big problem because I have not tossed one in years and I have been known to take them in my luggage when I go to Europe so that I can put them in a proper recycling bin. Lately, I just avoid buying or using gadgets that do not use rechargeable batteries. Yeah for me…

Foreign Mcdonald’s also cater to local taste buds and offer food that is traditional in the place where they operate. Oh, and guess what? You can have beer with your Big Mac or an espresso drink. Actually, beer is one of the drink options for your meal (not on the Happy Mean though! And yes, it’s OK to have a beer when your kid is present, as long as you don’t get too tipsy to drive…). Because McD’s offers local foods, you can find bowls of vegetable soup and more desserts are fruit based. If American McDonald’s were a little bit more like foreign McDonald’s, maybe it would not be such a bad thing to have your kids eat their lunch there every once in a while instead of trying to pack a healthy lunch for them.

However, foreign McDonald’s are more expensive than American ones. Forget about the 99 cent burger and expect to pay a decent price for your burger. And why not? After all, in many countries a larger proportion of people’s income is spent on food purchases and people expect to be fed meals that do not taste like artificially flavored cardboard. I bet if more people were aware of the actual taste (and price) that food is supposed to have, maybe a smaller proportion of food would satisfy them and that would mean that less stress would be put on the environment. Oh, and of course, the law of demand also applies–all other things held constant, and increase in price will cause quantity demanded to go down. Thus, one can save the environment and fight obesity at the same time. What a concept…

It’s Fall, well, almost… There has been some rain this year so maybe the fall colors will be pretty this year.

But it’s also time to garden again and prepare your slice of nature for the winter. I have already received the bulb catalogs but I won’t be getting anything this year–I guess that will be better for my carbon emissions but not so good for my curb appeal for next spring. I am debating whether to apply fertilizer to the lawn. I guess it’s advisable but I am one of those people who actually thinks about nutrient runoff and all the things that go down the sewer in your attempt to achieve the perfect lawn.

If I actually had a house where I knew I would be staying more than three or four years, I would start a composting system for the garden. (Of course, as it is I don’t have any trees so that I can compost their leaves but maybe I could get some leaves from the city.) I would also make it less lawn and more other plants.

This year I have been craving chrysanthemums. I think it’s because I walk by some small flowerbeds at work where the gardeners have planted really dark red mums. I saw their almost velvety flowers and I wanted some of that fall nostalgia on my own garden. So far I have been able to resist going to the store and buying some, but we’ll see if I can make it all the way through fall.

Maybe someday I’ll get to actually garden seriously and consistently and finally put to good use all my issues of Horticulture magazine–so far, not that many, only one year’s subscription.

Every once in a while on my way to work I find things that people are trying to rid of and that are left on the curb. Actually, the same goes for my evening and morning walks with my dog. I have found a metal and hemp coffee table, a fold up metal plant rack, and a framed poster of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. One day I found a nice glass that I use in the office as a plant holder.

Speaking of plants, one of the departments in my office building put some dying spider plants out in the hall. They looked pretty shabby but the only thing that was wrong with them was lack of water. I adopted these plants and they have been doing double duty beautifying the office and removing toxins from the air. They look really vibrant and they just need to be watered once or twice a week. Oh, and when someone visits the office I always get compliments, which is a real mood booster…

About a month or so ago, I ran into Yahoo! Green. They said that they would send me a free energy star efficient light bulb if I signed up, so I said to myself, eh, what do you have to lose? So I ended up enrolling and last Saturday, I finally received my freebie in the mail. It was a bit of a surprise because I had totally forgotten about it.

Of course, then I had to figure out where to put it. My final place of choice was the light above the stove, since that is a light that I often use not just for cooking but also for leaving some light on for Alfred the Pug when we leave him alone during dark hours. I think that will be a perfect spot for it. We try not to leave any lights on if we’re not around, but sometimes one needs to leave a light on. Just like Belinda Carlisle…

I tried to see if they were still offering freebies for those who sign up, but I could not find any information. But for the record, and as you can see in the above picture, the lamp did come from Yahoo!

Thanks Yahoo! for making me a better person…

P.S. The original post erroneously mentioned Yahoo! Answers instead of Yahoo! Green. Please note the correction.

I always enjoy watching the above commercial. I think that it clearly states the idea that being alive is not a neutral activity. Therefore, our goal should be to mostly do well with our resources. This means that when we shop, cook, work, etc. we need to think about the whole picture instead of just that particular moment in time. That means, also think about where the item came from, what you’re going to do with it after you consume it, and what will happen to it after it leaves your hands.

For example, the whole debate between plastic bags and paper bags. Which one is better? Some extremists say neither because plastic bags use up resources and create trash and paper bags kill trees. So what do these people say is the alternative? Reusable cloth bags, of course! And if you can get one of those designer cloth bags, then even better…

Let’s not be so radical. Yes, there are things that you can use a cloth bag for but there are others when that is not really practical. I am not going to wrap a piece of meat around a cloth bag, I’d rather use plastic because it is safer and overall cleaner. But let’s also realize that there are different types of plastic. When I lived in Europe, most grocery stores would carry bags that were biodegradable. That meant that if those bags ended up in a landfill, instead of lasting forever, they would eventually decompose within a few months or years. The trick with some plastic materials is that they come from products derived from oil, but there are some plastics that can be made from vegetable sources like corn, although, as you may know, corn has some environmental issues that we’ll discuss sometime in the future.

For many things, I prefer to use paper. I don’t really mind that trees are used to make those bags because you know what? Trees are a sustainable resource and those bags eventually decompose and produce soil organic matter to help other trees and plants grow.

Then there are cloth bags. They also come from trees if they are made of cotton, linen, bamboo, etc. But they can be washed and reused. But don’t forget that many crops require pesticides and fertilizers in order to be mass produced so that you and I can buy them at low prices. And when you wash the bags you are also using detergents (some of which are high in phosphorus) and water, which end up going down the drain as effluent that is partially processed and eventually reaches a river or the ocean. Many times, some of the effluent is very reach in nutrients, which may cause algae blooms and other problems in water bodies.

After you’ve read all this you may just want to scream and throw your hands up in the air like the monk in the video. But don’t despair. The solution is to find a good middle ground and be responsible about your choices because nothing you get is ever perfect, thus you must compromise. So what do I do?

Plastic bags: I usually try to minimize my use of plastic bags but if I go to a store that uses plastic bags I sometimes either take a bag myself, choose paper bags, take the items in my hand if they’re not that many, or if I end up with the plastic bag, I collect it at home and drop it off at a local grocery store, since many of them have collection bins to recycle plastic bags–of course, you must sort the bags, so that they fit the profile that the store recycles.

Paper bags: For certain items, a paper bag does the trick and I really like them because they are from renewable resources and they readily decompose. If you have a composting heap or bin, paper bags are a great way to add fiber materials to it, which prevent other greener materials from stinking as they decompose.

Cloth bags: Ideally, if you really need a bag, you want to use reusable bags and for that cloth bags are just great. Be on the lookout for craft shops or fairs where you can find bags that are cute and by purchasing them you are helping preserve the art of sowing at home. Some stores also have their own cloth bags that you are encouraged to reuse–think Trader Joe’s or Barnes and Noble. I particularly love my B&N bag: you can hold it on your hand or over your shoulder; it holds tons of stuff; it is rather sturdy; and once folded it occupies very little room in your car or luggage. Whenever I travel, my B&N bag is always with me to carry magazines or extra stuff on my return.

So the whole point that I want to send across to you is that you should think before you shop for anything! And don’t forget that reducing consumption is better than reusing an item and reusing, in turn, is better than recycling. And just about anything is better than trashing and item that is going to stick around till after the next millennium!!!

Those kids running the European Union have decided to embrace the “nouvelle vague” and off they went and started EUTube. Yeah, the European Union has met YouTube!!! Although some of their videos are rather funny, sexy, artistic, or what have you, there are a few videos that are meant to educate people about the environment and about other topics important to building the political European Union. I must warn you, though, that it is clear from their video posts that they do believe in Global Warming. Imagine that…

I highly recommend that you take a look at a couple of these:

• Everyone Can Save the Planet
  This one is kind of funny. It’s basically a cartoon commercial.

• You Control Climate Change
  This one has a lot of good information about mass transportation and why one should choose it. Of course, that is rather redundant for most of the U.S. since the mass transportation structure is almost non-existent outside of big cities. But take a look because it has tons of other useful tips on how to do small things that can make a difference: