nice tidbit from Breszny

The Nashville Scene publishes Rob Breszny's Free Will Astrology every week, but you can get it at his website, too.

In the email he sent out this week (many thanks to my boss for passing this on every week), there was this very nice factoid:

REBORN STEEL

The North American steel industry annually recycles millions of tons of steel scrap from recycled cans, automobiles, appliances, construction materials, and other steel products. The scrap is remelted to produce new steel. Every ton of steel recycled saves 2,500 pounds of iron ore, 1,400 pounds of coal, and 120 pounds of limestone. The industry's overall recycling rate is 68 percent.

Thanks, Whole Foods!

Whole Foods finally got some biodegradable meal boxes that actually fit a whole meal. They're made of bullrushes.

Yay!
The plastic ones that I had to use when I forgot my rubbermaid one always irritated me.

I am really looking forward to this weekend - hopefully Monday I will actually have caught up with everything and can focus on having a regular schedule, complete with actual posts rather than silly posts. I am pretty proud of myself for providing a picture for this one, despite its simplicity :)

Props to Vanderbilt

I got a please-donate letter from the VU Alumni Association, and I realized that they don't use envelopes with the little plastic windows.

YAY, VANDERBILT!!!!

Thank you so much! I got to recycle your envelope!

Green Remodel phase 2: bathrooms & painting

Obviously this remodel is getting to me - three days late on posting! Last week we tore up the carpeting in the back bedrooms. It was only 2 years old, and with the exception of about 5x11 feet in one room, was clean and totally usable. I put in on Freecycle and within 4 hours, found someone to come get it that same night! Freecycle is AWESOME.

Anyway, we are now laying the bamboo flooring, so my mind is of course looking forward to the next project: bath fixtures, toilets, countertops + sinks, and painting!

First of all, i did not know it, but you can replace the face of a shower fixture without actually having to install a completely new set-up. I was looking at something like this, but then decided that, since the plumbing is perfectly fine, it would be better to look to replace the rusty facing on the shower fixtures. We're still looking for a place to buy them.

As for the toilets, I think this might be my favorite 'green' item of the moment - a dual-flush (or "dual flow" or "european") toilet. These toilets let you use only a little bit of water if a big flush isn't necessary. This is so much better than letting something "mellow"! This should really be a visible 'green' upgrade, so I'm anxious to see if people like it. (if you search eBay for "dual flush toilet", bunches will come up - I think we're going to buy this one)

On to the countertops... we're still not sure what we're going to be replacing the bathroom sink countertops with. There are three options: silestone (what's in the kitchen), granite (a piece from the salvage yard), or "vetrazzo". Vetrazzo is the brand name (like Kleenex) for a concrete + glass slab. We are in the process of getting an estimate from 3D Concrete Design down in Murfreesboro. The concept is really cool - use recycled glass and concrete to make a really stunning, unique countertop. Check out their site for an idea of what i'm talking about.

On top of the countertops, we're going to have vessel sinks, the kind that sit on top of the countertop like a bowl. They have perfect ones at Southeastern Salvage, but they didn't come with the fixtures (which are insanely expensive at Home Depot), so we bought them off eBay instead.

Lots of 'green' stuff is about being healthy, and the paint we're going to use is more on the 'healthy' side than the truly green side. Dubbed "low VOC" (VOC meaning "volatile organic compounds"), it will smell less and release fewer harmful chemical compounds. Low-VOC paint is new - not recycled (which you can get but isn't good for interior surfaces) - but it is specifically formulated to not have that "off-gassing" effect that a lot of products have. Check out this article for more information.

So, that wraps up today's remodeling post - I'm sure there's more to come, as we are neck-deep in jazzing this place up. Next post, I'll talk about keeping your body healthy while doing a remodel - not an easy feat in many places, where demolition can be quite a rough ride!

New Year's Resolution - stop whining and start acting

I'm pretty sure that, with my hamburger-part-2 post, I hit rock bottom.

I was pretty depressed about price versus cost.
Probably, this depression came from the fact i was eating crap (read: free crap).
I feel SO MUCH BETTER when i eat fruit for breakfast and spinach salads for dinner!

Anyway, just about the time I hit "publish" on that post, I started reading Going Green: "A Step-A-Day Program for Lazy Suburbanites". It's a blog by a mom who is making one change a day toward going green.

WOW. She is so positive, ambitious, creative, and driven! One change a day! Reading through all of her past posts, I have decided to get busy doin' instead of being busy whining.

Thanks to an awesome Christmas present from my brother, a "Living Green" page-a-day calendar, I think I'll have an easier time of keeping perspective on all of this.

After all, I already do some pretty green stuff without really thinking about it... so perk up, D!

- I don't use paper towels anymore (still using toilet paper, though... there are some people who are much braver than I am!)
- I don't run the water hardly at all when i brush my teeth
- The heat hasn't been on all winter, and I've used the fireplace like 3 times.
- I'm not showering and/or washing my hair as much. I find that, when I'm doing *nothing* but sitting all day (i.e. not going out for dinner with friends or going to a meeting during lunch), I don't need to shower every day. My day job really is conducive to not showering as often, so if all I'm doing in a day is going to work and back, i can shower every other day. Washing my hair every other day has become so much of a habit that I forgot to wash my hair the other morning on an "on" day! It didn't make too much of a difference, really, so i might need to re-evaluate the every-other-day thing.

Stuff I still consciously think about:

- Recycling. Some days, I just want to throw stuff "away". Since I'm in the middle of a giant house purge (moving soon, maybe?), I'm getting rid of a lot of stuff, and it's very tempting to just throw it in the trash. The sheer volume is overwhelming. I have been able to set some stuff aside for eBay, and recycle some parts of things (cereal boxes, for example) - other stuff (damn those envelopes with plastic windows!) seems like it takes too much mental energy to figure out if it can be recycled.
- Turning off lights. I have to consciously make myself turn off lights, because I'm so lazy I'd really rather not - so it's still not a habit. But I'm getting there!
- The dogs' mess. The topic of Georgia being on reusable puppy pads deserves a post of its own - but suffice to say that, though I've got it set up so that cleaning up after the dogs is relatively green, there are still parts of it that are hard. When we travel, Georgia uses reusable pads and I use paper towels to clean up messes. When I give them baths, I use too much water. The Green Pets Initiative is still a work in progress! More on that later.
- Treating my car gently. It really requires presence of mind to maximize my use of the Prius. Easing up on acceleration, turning it off when i run inside somewhere, driving at 60 on the highway instead of 75, using the windows instead of the a/c - all of this really takes concentration for me.
- Buying stuff. Christmas had me thinking about how much stuff I and my family buy. It's really quite staggering. Even with my recent reductions, we're still going through SO MUCH STUFF - which creates trash, of course. I did some reading over the past week about "green" Christmas presents - buying handmade, giving sustainable gifts (events or services rather than things), and one of the items I stumbled on (I can't find it now) was about how one woman asked for things like having a family member take one less shower a week - this was a gift to her because it not only helped her in her pursuit of being greener, but it also meant that if she wanted to take a longer shower every once in a while, she could rest easy knowing that someone else was using less water so she could enjoy that luxury.

So, moving forward into 2008, I'm very optimistic. I don't expect to ever fully change my stripes (my packrat tendencies are primal, somehow), but developing new habits is good practice for life as well as "living green". The page-a-day calendar will help me stay focused on my desire to develop good habits, which is what I hope 2008 will be about.

This year's christmas cards

For the past two years, I've made Christmas cards instead of buying them... generally I like doing it until it comes to the assembly-line stuff (cutting out 400 little squares and putting glitter on them; stamping 180 martini glasses and coloring them in...), but at that point I'm always caught by the sunk cost dilemma... although in the end I am happy that I did the project, so I guess that finishing them is always better than abandoning them...

It's a bizarre characteristic of mine that I enjoy the end result more than the project itself (mom always enjoys the process more), but this year I think I might have found a card project that I do enjoy in addition to the resultant card.

Previously, I've stolen paper from mom's ridiculous stash, but this year, after staring at the racks of paper at Michael's for a long while and not finding anything that flipped my skirt up, I decided I'm going to use all the magazines that are in my recycling bin and old paper grocery bags.

I'm doing a tea-bag folded starburst out of the magazine pages, and then using the grocery bags for the cards & envelopes themselves. The tea-bag folding should be an easy, portable and very soothing project that i can carry around with me and pull out at any time, so maybe this year's card will come with the added bonus of no assembly-line stress.

I feel like I'm going to look a little ridiculous with my hippie, I'm-recycling-for-Christmas cards, but i think that they'll turn out sort of cool anyway, and lately I'm embracing my ridiculousness, so we'll see how this year's batch turns out. I'll definitely post a pic of the finished piece, but for now, you can see my prototype. I used a corporate gifts magazine that was selling petit fours - you can see the little cake layers and the chocolate decorations.

Taking the bad with the good, part 1: CFL bulbs

A happy Friday to you all! I hope that, wherever you are, you/those you love/your things are not on fire. I've been watching the news and feeling very doomy and gloomy, but I heard this morning that a very sweet quilt shop out there is doing just fine.

Anyhow, today's post will try not to be as big-picture and pseudo-philosophical as the last few.

My consumer habits are, to say the least, less than perfect. Now, I haven't gone into Wal-Mart for over a month now, which I'm very proud of. I don't want to give them any more of my money. But still, I buy pre-packaged foods (oh, frozen Kashi meals, why do you have to be so good?) and I buy non-local foods and i get my cleaning supplies & vitamins shipped USPS ground from Melaleuca.

But, there are some green-alternative choices that I've been preoccupied with lately.

I bought some CFL bulbs to replace burnt-out filament bulbs in my condo. There are a few lights that I leave on pretty much all the time - the laundry room, where the dogs' stuff is (the vet confirmed that leaving lights on for them will help, given that they both have really bad cataracts), and my closet, which has an automatic doorframe switch that drives me crazy because the door doesn't latch well and therefore constantly pops open, leaving the light on. I also put one in the shower part of the bathroom. I don't want the dogs constantly running head-first into the washer/dryer (they do enough running into things as it is), and I'm not really doing a lot of small-print-reading in the shower or closet, so I thought that some low-watt CFLs would be a good swap for those places.

A while back, my dad put CFLs in all of their out-door lights and in their closets, and I HATED them. The light emitted really messed with my eyes. German Chancellor Angela Merkel complained about them, too (in case my opinion isn't quite enough - see paragraph 4). But those places don't really require much focus for me, so I gave it a go.

Thus far, it's working out well enough. The light means that I don't run into things. And the ones that I bought aren't the same as the ones that dad used, so they're growing on me.

However, and it's a big however, right after I bought the bulbs, I read on Slate.com about Wal-Mart pushing to sell fluorescent light bulbs.

CFLs appear destined to become a consumer staple, either because hordes of people realize they're cheaper or because the alternative will be prohibited... Thus far, green goods have been pitched to the top: expensive Priuses for guilty yuppies, solar installations for rich techies. But to have real impact, energy-efficiency products need to make economic sense to those who congregate on the lower rungs of the economic ladder.

That's awesome, I thought. It's good to hear that the green thing is making its way down to us normal people. I mean, just because I want to have a solar panel doesn't mean I can afford to get it. I pretty much put all my eggs in the basket that is my Prius. Maybe Adam Werbach is slowly-but-surely making a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

But here's the kicker - those CFL bulbs shouldn't be thrown away in your normal garbage (thanks, NoImpactMan, for noting this!). The EPA isn't very helpful in explaining this to Joe Schmo on the street, but you can find info from them here. The EnergyStar website doesn't mention this until the very end of their page about the bulbs. CFLs are considered Household Hazardous Waste. Davidson County has a recycling facility off of Trinity Lane...

It seems like an awful lot of effort to exert when I thought initially that I was doing something good for the environment. I am willing to make that effort, but I wonder how many other people will also be willing? It's the same sort of thing as the beverage companies not wanting to be responsible for all of the empty plastic bottles that end up out there (see my post on Keep America Beautiful). NoImpactMan's solution is a pretty good one (see the end of his post about it), I think, but I'm skeptical and cynical enough to think that it won't happen without a fight.

All of this new technology is good, but if its side-effects are going to be polluting just as much if not more than the old technology that it replaced, we're just succeeding in fooling ourselves that we're going something good.

This all goes back to my main goal - think about what I choose to buy and do. I'd love to hear from y'all how you discipline yourself so that you do remember to be thoughtful. It's kind of and endless loop for me, so I've had to try and make it a habit, so that I don't have to consciously remember.

In my next post, I'll be talking about my Prius and it's battery - definitely another one of those, mixed-blessing, lesser-of-two-evils choices in my life.

Hillsboro Recycling center rocks! And Keep America Beautiful is maybe not so awesome after all

Back when I was working at a little community newspaper down in Williamson County, I was also living in The Gardens at Hillsboro Village. Both were themselves follies of post-graduate youth... but reading No Impact Man today made me think of another folly of that time - my resistance to recycling.

My time at the newspaper as a writer, listings/calendar editor and web editor coincided with the time I lived with my first after-college roommate - a guy who had the attitude that recycling was the status-quo and not recycling was, frankly, odd. I, on the other hand, could have cared less. The apartment complex had a dumpster, and after walking down three flights of stairs to empty any trash we had, I was unwilling to go further. But he was insistent, so we had a bin in our kitchen to collect recyclables, and our ignorance of the area had us driving 15-20 minutes to what we thought was the nearest recycling facility (Charlotte Center by the Strike-n-Spare) . This drive did not help my it's-way-too-much-effort attitude about the whole thing. When that roommate and I parted ways, so did I and the recycling bin.

Still, I continued to moderate calendar listings at the paper, which happened to be chock-full of community/government-sponsored events. The city and county governments were really good about sending in event listings and such - we never had to track them down. So there was a steady stream of these events, as well as a large quantity, and at one point there was a glut of events run by Keep Williamson Beautiful. Maybe it was around Earth Day or something. Anyway, there were opportunities for free shredding, free disposal of paint/gas/oil, and common-area clean-ups. The sheer amount of the events, I suppose, is what stuck in my mind, and I was left with the rather passive impression that Keep America Beautiful - the KWB parent organization, was a good thing. I didn't think too much about it - it seemed like the KWB events were good things, even if they bored me... I wasn't really into the whole community-togetherness thing anyway.

And I said all of this to address two things that occurred to me today.

First, I was surprised when I read this post on No Impact Man this morning. Basically, it talks about how
"...bottling and canning corporations promoted individual environmental action back in the 70s as a way to shirk their corporate responsibilities. Beverage industry interests told us all to clean up our own garbage through a front organization, Keep America Beautiful (KAB), so they wouldn’t have to."

You know, it's this sort of stuff that feeds my cynicism and sadness about capitalism and, well, people in general. I want to beat my fists against a wall in frustration over the failure of people to just try to Do Good! Why can't they simply try to respect themselves, their fellow man and their environment? Why don't they believe, at least a little, in karma? ::sigh:: I always end this train of thought by coming to the conclusion that all I can do be responsible for my own actions and choices - All I can do is all I can do.

Yesterday, I took the recycling over to the Hillsboro Recycling Center in Green Hills (check this site out for info on where you can drop off recycling). It's back behind Hillsboro High School on Hillmont Dr. (off Glen Echo), and there are not only recycling dumpsters, but there's a Goodwill collection truck there. I will admit, part of why I have started recycling is because of this center. It's super convenient! However, the other reason is because of my relatively recent preoccupation with being a little bit green... and one of the things that encourages me to at least try is Colin's blog. The point here is that the Hillsboro Recycling Center is AWESOME! Going there actually renews my commitment to recycle what I can. It's so nice that, in a community where I don't get the feeling there's much environmental awareness, there's this wonderful recycling center.