Seattle's Stellar Recycling Program

I haven't fallen off the green bandwagon. I was just waiting for something really fabulously eco to talk about before I posted to the blog again. And here it is:

We moved to Seattle last month only to discover that not only are there a plethora of local farmer's markets running year round, but the city also boasts one of the most interesting trash collection systems I've encountered.

In our little garage we have four trash containers:

1. 30-gallon Yard Waste - where we put all leaves, grass clippings, food waste (!), etc.
2. 20-gallon Recycling - all co-mingleables including paper board, cardboard, tin cans, plastic, plastic bags, white paper, newspaper, magazines. Basically everything recyclable but glass.
3. Small Milk Crate - for glass
4. 15-gallon Trash - for everything else

Isn't it so cool that you can recycle pretty much everything in a single repository, but also that they assume you will do so and only need a tiny trash bin? I'm especially impressed with the food waste option. Since it's too cold to be running the composter right now, I can still put all our veggie peels (plus bread and basically anything non-dairy or meat) in the Yard Waste bin. I wonder what they do with all that waste? Do you think they have a massive compost heap where people can buy back their garage? I will have to do more research on this come spring.

Yeah Seattle!

How I Spent 3 Trillion Dollars

The occupation of Iraq will cost nearly $3 trillion. The website, "The 3 Trillion Dollar Shopping Spree" lets you go virtual and spend $3T on your own!

Here's what I bought with my money:

• Universal Healthcare for every American
• Achieve Universal Literacy
• Increase sustainale organic produce in the US
• Replace disposable bags for all American households
• New clothing, shoes, coats and school supplies for ten million children
• Switch everyone to solar power
• End hunger and poverty related diseases
• Free college for 20 million students for 1 year

That's a whole lotta good stuff that impacts people around the world ... I'm just sayin'.

Good Excuses for Not Posting

Marc says I've become a bit of a "loser blogger." And that's a direct quote.

I have to say, I'm feeling a bit loser-ish myself since the last post was over a month ago. Nearing on 6 weeks. A lot has been happening in those 6 weeks, namely:

1. CompostTumbler is making compost (more on this later).
2. Vegetable garden is fully sprouted (more on this later).
3. Marc quit his job.
4. We launched our online boutique, www.HappyGreenBaby.com

You Gotta Get Paid

"There's nothing more stereotypically green than an avid recycler — and nothing more rare in real life ... RecycleBank was started with a simple idea: that people want to recycle, but they just need a little push."

And just how can one motivate people to get off their lazy asses and put that Keystone Light can in a recylcing bin instead of the trash? With good old fashioned dinero.

This is a great article my friend Lamia forwarded to me:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1730187,00.html?cnn=yes

The Boldest Statement I've Made Yet

King Soopers has, by far, the best organic produce selection in town.

Sunflower Market has good prices ($.97 for strawberries!) but considering 99% of all its stuff is droopy and half moldy, I'm basically buying food for the composter, not to actually eat.

Whole Foods is pretty, but it's lack of local or organic items is glaringly obvious, once you're able to step away from the fruit dip sample tray and start shopping. Oh, and need I mention the $6.99 lb. Brussels sprouts incident of Thanksgiving 2007?

Safeway has made a gallant effort to look like they support organic. Our newly remodeled neighborhood store has a special 10 foot section dedicated to bruised, miserable looking organic produce that is roughly twice the cost of the conventionals.

King Soopers, on the other hand, has fresh, shiny organic produce you actually want to eat! And just about every conventional item has an organic counterpart, with good prices to boot. Top that off with the fact that the checkers RARELY charge me for organic prices on produce and it's a no-brainer that I will brave my way through college students and Totino's Party Pizzas to fill my cart.

Wasteful Tech Habits

This blogger is funny. And he makes some really great points about how wasteful we can be when it comes to our technologies.

http://www.goodcleantech.com/2008/04/everyday_ecotech_wasteful_tech.php

I, for one, am not one to jump on the latest cell phone craze - but I do have an old multi-function printer here that, while it doesn't print black anymore, could serve someone fairly well as a scanner/fax or light printer. I am going to try to find it a new home where it will be loved ... and dusted.

One man's trash ...

Is a treasure for my garden!

The Larimer County Recycling Center is turning out to be a fine resource for me! I made a quick dash down there this morning with a load of corrugated cardboard (the Tumbler had to be delivered in something) and the overflowing box of low-grade paperboard. As I was dumping the catalogs into the "newspapers plus" dumpster, I noticed that someone had put several thousand fresh, never been opened copies of The Voice and some other Weld County penny-saver type of publication.

I looked around to make sure no one was watching and I grabbed a stack of the papers and put them into my box. I hurried back to the Xterra, smiling to myself at what a score I just made.

These discarded papers will make a fine organic weed barrier in my new bean/squash garden so I won't have to resort to plastic or toxic weed killers.