Compost…it’s good for your plants and global climate change April 27, 2009

By now, most of us have discovered that compost is good for the soil and plant growth. Here’s another great reason to compost food and garden waste instead of dumping them in the garbage: to minimize methane gas production. Landfills—the home for all of our unwanted stuff (check out The Story of Stuff, if you haven’t seen it)—are highly compacted so everything there breaks down in an oxygen-free—or anaerobic—environment. A byproduct of this decomposition is methane gas. No doubt you’ve heard the term global warming. Well it turns out that methane gas is about 20 TIMES more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. That’s bad news! So in addition to reducing our carbon and water footprints, we should also cut our methane footprint. One easy way to cut back on methane is to compost organic waste. Unlike landfills, compost breaks down with oxygen—or in aerobic conditions (that’s why we turn the compost pile every week)—so doesn’t release methane gas. If you can’t get a compost pile going immediately, it’s better to put vegetable and fruit scraps in your garbage disposer and grind them with waste water than to toss them in the trash. To learn more about methane, visit the EPA’s website.

Tilth Saves the Season Again! April 25, 2009

Why are there so many people? Is it a) vegan donuts b) free coffee c) rockin organically grown veggie starts or d) all of the above

This is where I confess, and it happens to the best of us, that my starts didn’t quite take root as well as I would’ve liked this season. Some new variables thrown into the equation, a busy life, a couple forgetful days and now, well let’s just say I’ll be stoked for next weekend. While my starts may be measly inches in height Seattle Tilth will have, no doubt, some fine specimens on sale at their Edible Plants Sale next Saturday. Make your way to Meridian Park in the Wallingford Neighborhood; (4649 Sunnyside Ave. N, Seattle WA 98103 if you need to mapquest it) grab a cup of coffee, an organic vegan donut from Mighty O (they’re vegan so you know they’re healthy for you), enjoy some gardening talks and get you some veggie goodness to take home. The sale will be running May 02, 2009 09:00 AM to May 03, 2009 03:00 PM. Here’s a tip for you. Get there early and avoid the crowds, pick your plants out quickly, get home and plant them before your neighbors get up. They’ll see this amazing garden and you can play-act like you grew them. But if they ask, and you can bet they will, be honest and send them down to Tilth so they can pick some up for they’re garden. So I can relax, you can relax and we can all sip lemonade and dream of the harvests soon to come. Then we can plant a few seeds, change a few things and experiment a bit more and know that no matter what our successes or failures might be, Tilth’s got our collective back…yard.

Building Greener in Seattle April 22, 2009

Whether you hate to love him or love to hate him, you have to give Mayor Nickels credit: he is a key driver behind making Seattle greener – including the Green Building Capital Initiative (based on the recommendations of a star-studded Green Building Task Force) that he announced today.  Here is a great summary of this announcement from Michael Mann, Acting Director of the City of Seattle’s Office of Sustainability and Environment:

Thirty nine years ago, Seattle environmental leader Denis Hayes had an idea to celebrate our Earth and to draw attention to the environmental changes we face.  Today, we celebrate that idea, and in Seattle, we pledge to continue to do our part to curtail global warming while saving energy and money.

Mayor Nickels has announced a new suite of incentives and policies to meet his challenge of reducing building energy usage by 20% between 2005 and 2020.  The Green Building Capital Initiative addresses both residential and commercial buildings, creating tools and financial resources that will help building owners save energy, money and reduce Seattle’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Here are some highlights of the Inititative:

• Offers 5,000 residential home energy audits, using state-of-the-art diagnostics to analyze a home’s heating and cooling systems.  Funded through a partnership with Puget Sound Energy and Seattle City Light, the audits will be available for $95 – a steep discount from the usual $600 price tag.  Call 206-684-3000 to schedule an audit.
• Develops a loan program so residents will be able to make energy-saving home improvements.
• Beginning 2010, requires measurement and disclosure of energy usage for commercial buildings larger than 50,000 square feet and multi-family buildings with more than 20 units.  The program will be expanded to smaller buildings over two years.  The data can be used by property owners to determine energy-saving measures.
• Increases energy efficiency requirements for new buildings by 30% and launches a new expedited permit process for innovative projects that meet energy performance standards.
• Ramps up and expands existing training programs for auditors and other energy-efficiency technicians.  The strategy is expected to generate about 230 jobs.

On a side note, Denis Hayes is now one of the keynote speakers at Cascadia’s Living Future – May 6-8 in Portland, OR.

Small actions = big payoff April 21, 2009

Doing the right thing—such as recycling a can or saving water—can sometimes be a bit of a pain. You might have to take a few extra steps to walk over to the recycling bin or even get out of your chair at work and walk down the hall, and it would be SO much easier to just toss the can in the trash bin right next to you. That’s why every now and then it’s good to be reminded that even little actions can make a big difference. Here are a few of them to think about on Earth Day.

 •  Recycling saves energy. Do you love your soda? Think twice before tossing that aluminum can in the trash. Making one from scratch uses 95% more energy than making a can from recycled aluminum.

 • Low-flow showerheads save lots of water. You may love those long showers under your old pulsating showerhead, but consider this: Based on a 10 minute long shower, a family of four that uses a low-flow (1.5 gallons per minute) showerhead instead of a full-flow (2.5 gpm) model can save up to 15,000 gallons of water a year. If your showerhead was installed before 1992, it may use up to 5.5 gpm. Switching to a low-flow head would save almost 60,000 gallons a year. Even better, switch to a low-flow head and cut your shower time to 5 minutes! After lots of research, I finally switched out my showerhead to a Niagara Earth Massage. It’s cheap and works great.

 • Cloth napkins save trees. If every household in the U.S. replaced just one package of virgin fiber napkins with 100% recycled ones, we could save 1 million trees. But why not save even more trees and switch to cloth? They’re so much more elegant, especially if you add candles (soy or beeswax, of course) and romantic music!

 • Remanufactured laser printer cartridges save oil. Over 350 million cartridges are discarded in our landfills every year, and each one takes up to 450 years to decompose. To manufacture a new cartridge, requires one gallon of oil. So the next time you need printer cartridges, purchase remanufactured ones and make sure to recycle your old ones.  

Reasons for Optimism April 17, 2009

It’s a sunny Friday afternoon and the forecasters are talking more sun for the weekend, so I am feeling pretty optimistic.  Another reason why this – and every other – Friday rocks?  It’s the day I get my Weekly Reasons for Optimism from Reasonsforoptimism.com.

RFO is a website that sends a weekly collection of stories that highlight the best of what’s happening in the world.  According to the editors, Cooper Carry and Iconologic, LLC:

It’s easy to forget that in today’s not-so-optimistic world, real progress continues, beauty appears, brave new worlds are explored, and creativity flows.  We keep seeking – and occasionally finding – our best selves.  There are, in fact, reasons for optimism everywhere we look.

This week’s collection features a great NPR story about cul-de-sac communes and hilarious videos of pedal-powered car and a Jew-powered snowboard.  Awesome!  I realize that for most of us, the last thing we need is another email in the inbox.  But I promise you, this one is worth it.  To subscribe, click here and plug in your email address.  Then prepare to be wowed by the endless possiblities and wonders of the human mind, heart and spirit.  Smile – you have reasons to.

One Square Inch of Silence April 14, 2009

The One Square Inch Red Stone Marker

Pretty much every summer during my childhood my family went to the Olympic National Park for our big vacation. You might think, EVERY YEAR? Didn’t you get sick of the same place? If you are thinking that, then you’ve never been there. We usually stayed at Mora Campground near Forks (an area now internationally famous because of those stupid Twilight books, but I digress) and one of our favorite day trips was to walk the Hall of Mosses Trail through the Hoh Rainforest. Well, how excited do you imagine I was when I found out about One Square Inch of Silence, the so-called “quietest place in the United States,” located in the Hoh Rainforest and marked by a single red-colored stone placed on top of a moss-covered log (the GPS coordinates of which can be found on the website).

The website for this concept states, “Olympic National Park was chosen for One Square Inch because it has a diverse natural soundscape combined with substantial periods of natural quiet. Unlike other national parks, such as Yellowstone, Grand Canyon or Hawaii Volcanoes, air tourism is undeveloped and roads do not divide park lands…One Square Inch of Silence was designated on Earth Day 2005 to protect and manage the natural soundscape in Olympic Park’s backcountry wilderness. The logic is simple; if a loud noise, such as the passing of an aircraft, can impact many square miles, then a natural place, if maintained in a 100% noise-free condition, will also impact many square miles around it. It is predicted that protecting a single square inch of land from noise pollution will benefit large areas of the park.”

 Check out the website for information on the new book co-written by the founder of the OSI concept, acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton, One Square Inch of Silence (Free Press, 2009), and a CD of the natural sounds he recorded at Olympic National Park. If you haven’t been to this place already, I don’t care where you live — you need to visit. But remember to be very, very quiet.

Plant Pick: Sea Buckthorn April 12, 2009

There are few plants in the world that offer the diversity of being edible, evergreen, ornamental, habitat, and tall enough to be used as effective screen. Oh, and did I mention that it fixes atmospheric nitrogen. Yeah it does that to. It’s not snake oil my friends, its Sea Buckthorn, Hippophae rhamnoides. Sea Buckthorn or Seaberry is an attractive perennial hedge-like evergreen that can reach just 6- 10 manageable feet in height. Most Americas have never heard of it, but in Asia and Europe is prized for it’s berries that cover female plants in abundant orange clusters. While the berries are incredibly astringent (and incredibly nutritious) they are often picked after the frost and sweetened into a juice, wine, or used as a base for liquors. They can also be made into a jelly or combined with different fruit to balance the flavor. The thorny hedge acts as great habitat for nest birds keeping them protected from domestic cats. Don’t worry. No need to don the chain mail to get at the berries. Branches with clusters are most often cut off the plant (carefully) and then frozen for a week after which the berries just fall right off. To get the berries at all you’ll need a male to pollinate the female and you’ll probably want more than one female since you’ll have some fierce competition from the birds. Another really cool feature of the fruit of the Seaberry is that the juice has a freezing point of –22 C. Cool, huh?! Imagine sipping some of that super-cold sweetened orangey goodness in the summer. My mouth is actually watering just thinking about it! Seaberry, the incredible edible hedge, though relatively unknown is farily easy to find. Once you get one I’m sure you’ll love all it’s features. Did I mention it fixes nitrogen? Yeah it does that too.

The Best “UnConference” of the Year April 7, 2009

Do you consider yourself a forward-thinking and revolutionary green builder, contractor, architect or design professional?  Or do you just want to be?  Either way, you need to be at Living Future (May 6-8 in Portland, Oregon).  This annual “unconference” of the best and brightest in the industry is centered around the Cascadia Region Green Building Council’s Living Building Challenge – a deep green building concept that has already resulted in at least 60 proposed Living Buildings in the design or construction phase throughout North America and beyond.  Some of these project teams will be presenting at Living Future, which will provide you with an opportunity to explore this concept a bit more.

By attending Living Future, you will be among creative, out-of-the-box designers and builders who agree that it is possible to build something that acts like a plant: creating its own water and energy, and mimicking nature and its systems in ways that are wildly innovative and offer the potential for far more environmentally friendly buildings than has been thought possible.

Taking place May 6-8 in Portland, Living Future is a smaller and more focused event, enabling attendees to participate in forward-thinking conversations. Among those who are headlining the event are keynote speakers Janine Benyus, renowned author, innovation consultant and co-founder of Biomimicry Guild; S. Richard Fedrizzi, CEO and Founding Chairman of the US Green Building Council; and Jason F. McLennan, CEO of the Cascadia Region Green Building Council and author of the Living Building Challenge.

Let us know if you would like additional information about the event – we hope to see you there!

Got an old cell phone or two? It’s National Cell Phone Recycling Week April 6, 2009

Every time I open the newspaper, I always seem to land on one of those full-page ads touting the hottest new cell phones. You know the phones: they look cool and do just about everything imaginable, except brush your teeth. (No kidding! Have you seen all those apps posted on the walls in Apple Stores? They offer 25,000 online!). I did finally break down recently and buy a new phone that does all sorts of fun stuff. I held on to my old one for four years, though, until the charger finally stopped working. That’s a long time to keep a cell phone these days, but I kept thinking about the zillions of phones that must be piling up in the landfill or in some distant country and leaching toxic chemicals into the soil. Then I found out that only 10 percent of cell phones are recycled, so that’s probably exactly what’s happening. The good news is that now there’s a big push to get all of us to recycle our phones. April 6-12, 2009 is National Cell Phone Recycling Week 2009, a joint effort between the EPA’s Plug-In To eCycling and cell phone manufacturers, service providers, and retailers. You can drop off or mail in your old cell phone, PDA, cell phone batteries, chargers, or other accessories at most retailers that sell phones. For more details, you’ll find links to those retailers on the EPA website. Don’t forget to erase all your phone data before sending it off!

Check your tire pressure and (help) save the planet April 4, 2009

The California Air Resources Board just adopted a resolution requiring auto repair shops to check tire pressure whenever they perform maintenance, oil changes and smog tests beginning in July 2010. This may sound like a crazy idea to some (like the neighbor who said “Are liberals insane?”). Okay, so maybe it’s a bit silly to mandate something like this, but hey, when was the last time you checked the pressure in your tires? Uh… Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I did it (hopefully, my husband has!). But you can bet I’m going to check them soon. So what’s all the fuss about? According to the U.S. Department of Energy, tires inflated to the correct pressure can boost mileage by 3.3%. Hmmm…that doesn’t sound like much. In fact, for a car that gets 30 miles per gallon, it would only increase mileage by about 1 mile per gallon. But over the life of the car, it adds up to serious fuel savings. Plus you have to look at the big picture. There are 35 million cars in California (Yikes! And my 15 1/2 year old son wants to make it 35,000,001 when he turns 16? Not gonna happen!). If everyone checked their tires regularly, the savings would be huge. The Air Resources Board predicts the annual savings in California will eliminate 700,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions; reduce the state’s fuel consumption by 75 million gallons; and extend a tire’s life by 4,700 miles. So why wait until 2010? Checking tire pressure is easy. First, you need to figure out the correct pressure for your tires (check the owner’s manual for your car). Then, you can either buy a gauge at an auto supply store (I like the digital kind), or use the one at the gas station next time you fill up. Just make sure you avoid those cheap stations that charge you for air!