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.

I Tumble For Ya

I am officially composting.

Saturday brought a bright sunny Colorado spring day, Marc was without flu or hangover and we set to building the Backyard ComposTumbler. Thanks to my expert instruction reading, our composter was set up and filled with old leaves just a scant 45 minutes.

I was even able to take out my first bag of refuse from the kitchen pail, after cleaning veggies from the weekly store run. And, it's looking like I will be able to take another load out in the next few days thanks to my Roast Banana-Pumpkin Bread baking frenzy and our daily coffee habit. The website says I should have compost in 4-6 weeks ... just in time to start my garden! I wonder if it will come together faster if I wear a denim shirt while I use it.

I'm So Excited

And I just can't hide it. I'm about to lose control and I think I like it.

I'm also glad Marc isn't here right now to see how giddy I am over the arrival of my compost pail! It's basically just a mini trash can to hold all my kitchen scraps before they are off to the ComposTumbler but it's stainless steel (goes with the toaster) and has a charcoal filter in the top to help eliminate odors. Best of all, I got some BioBags, which are fully biodegradable trash bags that I can use in the Pail and put directly into the compost pile.

They will also be a big revelation in dog poop pick up. No more fossilized golden retriever poop.

Now, if only I had some vegetable scraps to put in it. It's almost enough to make a girl want a pre-dinner apple.

Pizza Hut Goes "Natural"

Well, I have to hand it to Pizza Hut for being the first mainstream fast food chain to jump on the Natural wagon. I saw an advertisement today for Pizza Hut's new "Natural" pizza. What's so natural about this pizza? Well, I'm-a-gonna-tell-ya.

1. Multi-Grain Crust (note - not organic, not whole wheat, but a multitude of grains)
2. Sauce "made-with" organic tomatoes
3. Choice of new "natural" toppings (which from the images they showed consists of sliced tomatoes and begs the question - are the rest of the toppings not-natural?)
4. "All-Natural" mozzarella cheese

It's just yet another example of the bastardization of the term "natural." Junk food purveyors of the world are all racing to slap the term "natural" on their packaging to win the hearts, taste buds and market share of pseudo-conscious consumers. What's next - Organic Special Sauce?

Oh - and I should note here that my local Pizza Hut has a Hummer delivery vehicle parked out front of its store. I wrote a sharply worded email to corporate HQ but have yet to receive a response.

Scrooge McAnnie

Sometimes, the hardest thing about living the organic lifestyle is parting with my pennies.

To celebrate Marc's birthday this weekend, I made Whole Grain Pancakes with Blueberry Syrup - a recipe we have been salivating over since I purchased a copy of Bon Appetit last month. The recipe required a trip to the store, of course, so I went by the Safeway up the street. Everything was going smoothly - I didn't mind the $5.99 price tag on the Kodiak whole grain pancake mix (it looks good!) and I didn't even flinch at the $4.49 sale price on O brand organic butter. $5.99 for Organic Pure Maple Syrup - sure! It takes a lot to tap those trees. But when it came to the frozen blueberries, I stalled.

The Safeway Brand Organic Wild Blueberries were on SALE for $4.99. The regular blueberries were $2.99. I'm not sure why I was so appalled at this price ... it just seemed like a shocking difference. After much pondering, I eventually bought the organic berries rationalizing that I was either an organic shopper, or not.

The pancakes were delicious, by the way.

And, We're Back

Sorry for the hiatus, but as many of you know - Marc and I were on a month-long adventure in Southern Patagonia, Argentina. We kept a couple of blogs going intermittedly, which you can check out here:

http://adventureedge.blogspot.com/
http://patagoniawino.blogspot.com/

I did find some interesting "green" things to report back on from our trip - which I will be outlining in the coming days. Nice to be home!

Stuck On You

I just read this in today's Ideal Bite and I had to share!

You know the little stickers you find on apples, oranges, lemons and jicama (just to name a few)? Well, it turns out produce producers are utilizing a standard system for identifying your juicy favorites. Look for these numbers and you'll know what you're feeding your body!

Look for the labels stuck on your fruits and veggies:

• A four-digit number means it's conventionally grown.
• A five-digit number beginning with 9 means it's organic.
• A five-digit number beginning with 8 means it's Genetically Modified.

Tap That

Did you know that when you buy that plastic liter bottle of water at the 7-11, you're actually consuming 6 liters of water? Yeah - that's because it takes nearly 5 liters of water to manufacture the plastic bottle holding all that H2O. I saw it on Oprah so it must be true.

Not enough to get you to quit the Evian habit? According to the Green Guide, Americans tossed over 22 BILLION empty plastic bottles into the trash. To produce those bottles alone, the US will drain 1.5 million barrels of oil over the course of just a year. That's a lot of Texas Tea we could be using to power our planes, trains and automobiles ... but instead we're tossing it into the landfill where it will sit for the next thousand years.

Do we seriously still think our tap water isn't safe to drink? Sure, we think we're making the "healthy" choice when we opt for Dasani in lieu of a Coke on our road trips, but what about the refill? What's so wrong with re-using those bottles with cold tap water? Or hey, here's a novel idea: how about we use a little forethought and bring our own bottle with us when we're out and about (maybe it could stow in one of your handy canvas totes?).

I'm all for drinking plenty of water and there are times when I will buy a bottle at the airport, but I refuse to buy plastic bottle after plastic bottle. What am I, too good for the tap?
Not anymore! I have my aluminum Sigg bottle set and ready to go in my carry on for next week's trip. I will fill it up at home and at various stops along the way, because it's just not worth it to create the extra trash.

Plus, the cool leaf design on the jug is a much finer fashion statement.

On a Personal Note

My only non-family readers of this blog, Molly and Dave, welcomed their baby boy, Henry, to this little planet of ours on Monday, January 21, and I have to say, I've never been more psyched to see two people become parents. I'm looking forward to seeing how those cloth diapers work ("seeing" mind you, not "trying" them out).

Congratulations you guys ... we can't want to get to know your happy green baby! Huck is one lucky kid to have such super 'rents.

Damn It Feels Good to Be a Recycla'

Aside from the fact that I was a woman about town in a gas-guzzling Xterra today, I feel pretty good on the eco-living homefront. I trucked my 5 gallon tub of low-grade paperboard (cereal, frozen food, silk, egg cartons), box of unwanted catalogs (which I hope will be declining soon, see recent post about canceling catalog mailings) and a couple of corrugated cardboard boxes to my local recycling center. While there, I noted a new container dedicated to office paper and junk mail. Made a note to start office recycling at aSQUARED Online Marketing, Inc.


Then I headed to Target to procure a couple of personal items and some first aid necessities for upcoming vaca. I handed the check out woman my hideously embarrassing old skool Wild Oats canvas bag and she enthusiastically thanked me for bringing in my own bag! I was shocked. Most of the time I get sideways glances from the checkers like I'm some sort of dirty hippie. Instead this woman went on to tell me about the friend who works at the landfill and how she was absolutely appalled at all the plastic bags that get thrown away (about 100 billion annually in the US of A alone). She even went so far as to tell me all about the reusable bags Target was selling for $1.49.

Yeah for consumer awareness. Now - get your own bag!

EcoBag String Bag - great for produce. $10 each

Recyled SailCloth Bags from VivaTerra - $98
(but you'll want to carry it ALL the time)

Fun Tote - Cotton Canvas Tote from Elsewheres
created by independet artists. $32

The Cost of Beauty

Winter is officially taking its toll on my skin. My hands are cracked. The skin on me feet is so dry it's actually itchy and my face is splotchy and tight. I paint such a beautiful picture of myself, yes?

Couple this with our upcoming travel plans, and I was in desperate need of some lightweight bottles of intense moisture. Shopping around at my local Aveda purveyor and then at Target, I was shocked by what I found. Reading labels on beauty products is worse than the ingredient list on a Totino's party pizza! So many words I didn't recognize, except of course, that every potion I picked up at Target included, "petroleum." When I read that I dropped the bottle like it had the plague!

At Aveda, the selection was somewhat better: The Hand Repair cream I ultimately purchased has no petroleum or parabens, which is a real score in the beauty world ... and I paid for it. $18 for 4 fl. oz.

Next up: Face Lotion. My typical Aveda creme comes in a glass bottle, which isn't good for traveling around the world. My requirements for this category included: Plastic bottle, ability to close the top and SPF. At Aveda that limited me to one option - Tourmaline Charged Protecting Lotion. While paraben was on the ingredient list (as the last item!) and it set me back a whopping $38 for 2.5 fl. oz. I went for it. The label says it "infuses skin with radiance"!

How do these items rank on EWG's Skin Deep report?
The tourmaline face lotion is a "yellow" 5. Not too toxic ... but not exactly "good" either.
I couldn't find a report on the Hand Relief lotion - but all the rest of the moisturizers rank from 3-5 ... not that bad, I guess, especially compared to the crap I was looking at at Target. Vaseline Intensive Care Aloe lotion ranks a "red" 8.

One winner that I will go back to Target for is the Aveeno Active Naturals Daily Moisturizer. It's a good everyday lotion (with a small flip top lid, great for travel) and it ranks a "green" 2 on the EWG scale!

Turns out you can find a good deal in non-toxic beauty out there!

Ode to Indian Food

Oh Indian Food - how I love you. How is it possible I have gone 29 years without embracing your spicy curry flavors, or nibbling on your chewy, buttery Naan bread? Can I say that I have really "lived" for all these years I have gone without experiencing the many ways you can turn a potato into a saucy main dish?

If ordering things off a menu by number is wrong ... I never want to be right.

Setting the Tone

I originally made fun of Oprah's "Favorite Green Things" show, which I recently saw in reruns over the holidays. It's a riff on the ever-popular, all-consumer "Favorite Things" holiday show, which turns people into crazed shoppers seeking William Sonoma panini presses and Ugg boots. Kind of like our moms in the 80s hunting Cabbage Patch dolls (I got a homemade version named Jamie, who was just as cute and since my mom worked at a hospital I got a birth certificate with actual baby footprints on it! I wonder where that kid is today).

Anyway, the show was full of all those useful tips like: Donate clothes, don't throw them away. Use CFL lightbulbs. Don't spray your house with bleach and toxic chemicals. One tip, though, hit home.

Elizabeth Rogers, who wrote The Green Book, a collection of "little things that make a big difference" said that the average person uses 6 paper napkins a day. She suggests that if we all gave up just one napkin a day, we could save a BILLION pounds of paper waste from going to the landfills (remember: you can't recycle soiled paper, including pizza boxes with cheese stuck in it).

While I don't think I use 6 napkins a day, I definitely felt this was an area of unnecessary waste I could easily eliminate, because even though we have recycled, bleach-free Seventh Generation paper products - it's still waste paper. Anyway, I have a drawer full of cloth napkins I've picked up along the way for various Thanksgiving meals or "fancy" occasions that need to be used.

So, the Angelos are going 5-star. We use cloth napkins every night with dinner instead of paper. It adds a certain element of class to the veggie burgers. And unless Marc has another incident with the wine glass or I over-dress the salad, we can get 2 or 3 uses out of each Ralph Lauren Home beauties before I have to wash 'em.

Fishy Business

Marc and I went out to dinner with our friends Jim and Jen on Friday night to one of our favorite Italian eateries - Enzios. Wine flowed, conversation bubbled and I'm pretty sure I convinced Jen to come to Napa with me for the Carneros Half Marathon (might have been the wine talking on both our parts!).

As Marc pondered the specials: some sort of steak with marsala-marinated wild mushrooms or a wild-caught grouper with piccata sauce, Jim was working some texting magic on his new super phone. Within seconds he was telling us that grouper was probably not the best fish to be eating, from a sustainability POV. Apparently grouper is a long-living fish (it changes sex as it ages!) and is often over-fished. Grouper also has levels of mercury that may be a health risk to adults and children.

How did Jim get all this information from his phone? I found out in today's IdealBite newsletter: Blue Ocean Institute FishPhone. Send a text to 30644 with the message FISH in all caps, followed by the name of the fish you want to know about, and it'll fire back sustainability info on that species. Or, check it out online: FishPhone.org.

Considering Marc is not a woman of child-bearing years, is limiting his red meat intake and he eats relatively little fish anyway, he went with the grouper.

Good Bye Junk Mail

On the topic of trash ... there are days when there is nothing in our mailbox but catalogs. J.Crew, LL Bean, Duluth Trading Company (??), Campmoor, Athleta (now I get two copies!), Williams Sonoma, Crate & Barrel, not to mention all those Sierra Trading Post books. It's not that I don't love to look at catalogs - it's a throwback to my childhood when I would dog ear page after page of the Spiegel and JC Penny catalogs with items I would never buy but that were "perfect" for back-to-school.

But, alas, all this window shopping makes for a large box of glossy pages to be disposed of. I read in my IdealBite email today: U.S. catalog production uses 53 million trees and enough water to fill 81,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools each year. And, Americans waste about 8 hours per year dealing with junk mail.

So, I'm opting out. Just like the "do not call" list, you can put your name and address on a similar list with direct mail companies. I just registered me, my former me (maiden name) and Marc on this site:

https://www.directmail.com/directory/mail_preference/

It lets you choose if you want to still receive those Victoria's Secret catalogs and credit card offers.

Or, try this one:
https://www.catalogchoice.org/

Trash Talking

The average American throws away 4.5 lbs. of trash every day.

According to the EPA, "garbage" or "trash" consists of "everyday items such as product packaging, grass clippings, furniture, clothing, bottles, food scraps, newspapers, appliances, paint, and batteries."

I, for one, never throw clothes or shoes into the garbage. Instead, items I no longer wear/want sit in trash bags in the garage waiting to be taken to the Goodwill. The bags typically sit in "charity purgatory" for an average of 4-6 months before Marc finally gets fed up with them taking up gear space and he schleps it to ARC.

Back to the 4.5 lbs. of trash ... that's a lotta crap! We recycle a TON with bins of low-grade paperboard, magazines and co-mingleables overflowing in our garage, so I'm pretty sure the Angelo daily load is slightly less. Yet, I feel we can be doing more! The worst part of the average 4.5 lbs. is the "food scrap" inclusion. This organic matter should be returned to the earth to naturally biodegrade and enhance the soil. Instead its preserved in plastic to be fossilized with the rest of our trash in the landfill.

I'm talking composting here people!

I know the vast majority of our trash is food waste and I'm willing to bet that if we were to incorporate a composter into our recycling routine, we would put out only 2 bags of trash a month (compared to the one or two bags per week we current dump).

Composting doesn't mean smelly heaps that attract critters and require a bunch of hands-on maintenance. New composting bins are fully enclosed and come in a variety of sizes to suit your level of compost needs.

Not an avid gardener? It doesn't really matter - you can spread compost in flower beds, use it for potted plants or sell it to your green thumb neighbors! The point is, we're keeping good organic materials out of the landfill!

I've had my eye on the EcoTumbler for over a year now ... I think the time has come!

Is This Weird?

Sometimes I pee in the dark.

I figure, hey why not? I'm saving a little bit of energy by not flipping the switch and because I have the benefit of sitting down to tinkle, there's no chance of a splatter incident.

BTW, this is not a photo of my actual toilet. I only wish!

My New Favourite Breakfast

Inspired by European Museli, here is my new fav way to start the day:

1/2 c. mixed berries (right now I have a frozen organic variety from Costco with blackberries, raspberries and blueberries. I let them thaw out before eating).

1/2 c. quick oats (not cooked)

1/2 c. vanilla soy milk

Let these three ingredients hang out in the fridge for about 30 minutes. Mix it up with some nuts (right now I have pecans, but sliced almonds would be better) and enjoy!

Bon apetito!

Next time I eat this (tomorrow) I will set up a photo shoot with Marc so you can get the full experience.