One Less Car: One Year Later

Last May (2009) our second car threw a timing belt which sucked into the engine and effectively destroyed the vehicle. Although we are a family of 5, with one student in school 25 miles away due to custody issues, we have never replaced that car.

In that one-less-car year I put about 800 miles on my bike (900 the year before the car loss) but my spouse put an additional 500 miles or so on her bike and the kid trailer.

In that year, we have used some public transit, lots of bikes, carpooled rides and a couple of times calling cabs. But we havn't really missed the car terribly.

Cold Turkey

We were working on driving bikes more anyway. I put 900 miles on my bike two, three and five miles at a time around town the year before we ditched one car. We increased that to about 1200 miles post-car, but and this is key we rode in an auto nearly 10,000 miles fewer. The annual mileage on the missing vehicle mostly went missing.

Oh a couple thousand miles just transferred to the remaining car -- but in the end, by going cold-turkey and losing one car, we saved thousands of car-riding-hours that we would not have saved by just trying to drive bikes more.

Where We Live

Where we live is important. Pasadena is relatively bike friendly; lower speed limits, smaller streets, share the road signs, everything we really need is available locally (within, say, five miles). Last week, for example, I drove my bike (including trailer) to my school site for work 2.5 miles from my home. My son and I rode our bikes to the dentist on Friday; on Saturday my wife and I took the 5 and 12 year olds to do our grocery shopping by bike. (She towed the 5 year-old's trailer, I towed the empty one for the week's groceries.) The type of community we live in has been important in facilitating our one-less-car year.

So, the short report on reducing car miles: (1) Live near your work and a complete community (not a bedroom suburb outside of a "real" city); (2) Insist that your community by bike and pedestrian (transit user) friendly; and (3) Kill a car cold turkey.

904 Bike Miles For the Year

UPDATE: Ended the bike-year (on the solstice) having driven 904 bike miles that I didn't ride in the car. See the prior post for the details on how you can become less of a car-rider . . . and for links to the Red Tag Your Car series.

So far this summer I am at about 150 miles, and will probably get to to 300 before Labor Day. Will this save the planet? No. Does it help? Yes. Could you help. You betcha!

Something holding you back? Maybe you have a "Would-But!" Check here and see.

800 Miles & Counting: Creeping Green(er) Every Day, One Errand at a Time

It is interesting that last week, on Bike to Work Day, May 14, I logged an even 800 miles on my bike over the preceding 11 months. (I will probably hit 900 by the end of the school year, and may make an effort to hit the symbolic 1000 mile point.)

As miles go, that's not a lot: Its not a lot of car riding saved, and from a hardcore cyclist's perspective its not much when such a person will do a 100 mile "Century" recreational ride in a day.

But I suggest that it is an important milestone for three reasons: (1) it is a lot more mileage than I have put on in the last two years or so; (2) it represents a sea change to my own mindset regarding car riding and (3) it is an example of what can be accomplished if you start simple and slow.

Last year, I did about 500 miles on the year. The year before only about 300 -- a mere six or seven miles, average, of a weekend running errands.

And that is the point of my third point: Having mentally red tagged the car years ago, I started slow. Driving a bike for local weekend errands, quick mid-week runs to the store, or to breakfast out or to the to park with the kids on weekends. ( See Red Tag Your Car, Part I, Part II and Part III)

As the weekend trips improved my skills, comfort level and physical stamina, I began to ride more to work during the week. Now, I ride most every day that I do not have to deliver my son to school near his mother's house 25 miles away. And in the summer the car I use for those errands is parked so much we sometimes start it to keep the battery up.

At this time (see item #2) I tend to view the need to ride in a car as a failure; of errand route planning, of ability to find a truly local option, of trying to squeeze too much to fast into a life on the road.

As for the mileage, if you don't bike much now it seems like a lot. I promise that the longest stretch I ever rode to get that mileage was across town in Pasadena, California -- five miles at best. I work 1.80 miles from where I live; my daughter's preschool is 1 mile away; we shop 1.98 miles in the other direction, next to my other daughter's school and my employer's main office. One reason I am able to accumulate these miles two and three miles at a time is we have largely resolved one of the major "would-buts" of non-automobility: Live where you want to work and play.

You can do this too. It's easy. It's green. It's even healthy for you!

Watch Your Language! How We Refer To Things Can Affect How We -- and Others Understand Them

It's a fairly ancient and standard joke that in the world of Politically Correct Terminology a trash hauler is a "sanitary engineer." Despite that, it is actually true that how we name things does affect how we perceive them. Here are a few suggested alternative terms for things that just might help folks understand why the green version is important:

• "Conventionally Grown Food" is, really, something of a misnomer. Using heavy doses of petrochemical neurotoxins and artificial growth stimulants to grow our food has only been "conventional" (i.e., the usual manner) for the last 50 years or so. Before that, much more organic and near-organic food reached our tables -- because that was the norm. So, instead of "conventionally grown" may I suggest "chemically grown food" to accurately reflect the state of what's in the super market. Or as we sometimes call it around our house "dirty food." Try this term swap yourself, and suddenly organic food seems a lot more reasonable.

• "Organic Food" as a term is itself problematical. It makes that food seem special, even unusual. This is not good for at least three reasons: First, many large producers charge unnecessary premium prices for organically grown products, trading on the implication of "specialness" to make a higher profit. Second, organic food should be the norm -- i.e., "conventional" should mean "organic," but it never will so long as we refer to clean food as something special. Third, "organic" brings with it all sorts of baggage suggesting hippies eating brown rice stored in hand thrown pottery jars that many folks just don't want to be associated with, even if they really aren't all that excited about poisoning themselves or our farmland by eating the chemically grown variety. So, in our house, we call organic food what it is: "clean food."

• "Bike rider" or "cyclist" similarly does not convey the (should be) mainstream nature of human powered transportation in our cities and suburbs. I have taken to referring to "bike drivers" when discussing vehicular cyclists. Bike drivers have a right to use the road; bike drivers are serious vehicles, going places and doing things, not just sports enthusiasts out for a little ride.

• "Drivers" or "car drivers" used to refer to motor vehicles operators does not either accurately include all vehicles on the road, or the activity that takes place in a car. I actually drive my bike; I push it forward under my own muscle power. If you are in a car, the best that can be said is you are out for a ride. Thus, of course, I often refer casually to "car riders," both as the flip-side of "bike drivers" and to demonstrate the passivity of the activity.

So, you might hear me say something like this:

Tomorrow I'll drive my bike to the market after work; because of the bike I'll have an easier time parking than most of the car riders making the same trip. I'll buy our favorite clean pasta and sauce to cook for a big group of folks, but will probably compromise and buy chemically grown dark chocolate for the dessert we are making, and dirty artichokes because the clean ones are currently out of stock. "

See what I mean? The need to buy chemically grown and dirty food over clean food is terribly reduced. In my revised paragraph, the patchouli-tinged aura associated with a fluffy bike ride to buy organic pasta is reduced, as is the whingeing and whining factor that comes of complaining that your store is out of organic vegetables. No one could blame you for griping about having to buy chemically grown food -- even though most people don't realize that's what they're eating already anyway!

Remember the advice of good old Humpty Dumpty:

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.' 'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.' 'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'

Sustainable Food: It's All in Your Head, And on Your Plate

Our neighbors at the extreme-green Path to Freedom here in Pasadena recently posted an important reminder about the sustainable use of food. In one simple graphic they have captured several of the many factors that go into sustainable food use.

The first item on the list, Buy it with Thought, itself embodies several factors. I don't know what the Dervaes family had in mind when they wrote it, but to me the following questions come to mind in order to buy food "with thought:"

• Will my family like it?
• Is it healthy for us or is it something we should limit (e.g., high or added fats and sugars?)
• Is the food organic, local grown or both?
• Is it fairly traded or certified?
• Is it heavily processed?
• Is it chemically augmented?
• Genetically modified?

Most of these questions go unasked most of the time, and the result, I daresay, is that we as a community support a food industry that it is not in our long term, personal self-interest to support. It is sometimes just too easy to compromise one's longterm interest in sane public policy when faced with an immediate need like hunger. But I have found that the more we practice thoughtful eating by thoughtful grocery shopping, the less likely we are to compromise and eat something sustainably-vile just because it is handy.

For me, Cooking with Care means using both sustainable and healthy cooking methods. The PTF folks make use of a solar oven regularly -- which is beyond my personal commitment level. But we choose to use natural gas for our stove and oven, since it is a more efficient and less "carboniferous" (lower CO2) method for cooking than an electric range. If we ever had a surfeit of solar electricity on our hands it might make sense to use an electric range; but we only do 70-90% solar annually, so not yet.

I also like the common sense reminder Don't Waste It (food); that's a no brainer, of course, since trashing edible food costs the local household budget needlessly, but it also affects the larger ecosystem. Where a community or country is particularly profligate, the waste can really add up to a level that moves food production into a non-sustainable place.

The other half of waste, however -- at least in my mind -- comes down to what one does with the parts of the food one does not eat. Trimmings from vegetable preparation, for example. The potato that went soft in the back of the bin. Even the green beans which no threat or entreaty could convince the three-year-old to eat. Can we avoid wasting them? You bet!

A small bin on the counter and simple compost bin in the yard or on an apartment patio (yes they do have a sealed compost bin for just such a situation) is a great way to reduce landfill mass and avoid wasting the excellent fertilizer and soil builders one might otherwise throw away. For a longer rant on composting, click here.

The final concept -- Homegrown is Best -- is both one of the easiest to achieve at some level and hardest to achieve at a significant level. But it is an excellent aspirational goal -- especially since you know that the food is organic, definitely local and fair trade. More interestingly, I have found I am far less likely to be wasteful with food that I have grown. I know how long it took to get that bowl of broccoli or pan of fried potatoes, and you will see me turn positively miserly when it comes to using up food I have invested months of time in!

In the end, most of these concepts come down to awareness; consuming while mindful of the real inputs and consequences of one's consumption, and of the options available to be a sustainable element in the natural system rather than a destructive and disruptive factor.

Reusable Bag "Would-But" Remedies

The other night a lady spoke at a meeting of our city Environmental Advisory Commission, calling herself an "uncommitted reusable bag user." She had come down to the City Council chambers to support a proposal to prohibit single-use plastic bags and place a disposal and education fee on single use paper bags.

She commented that she had some reusable bags, but she would often forget them when she walked to the store. She asked for the prohibition and fee to give her -- and others -- some additional incentive to be mindful of their choices (and especially to help remember to bring her bags!)

Until such a gentle reminder is the rule in your area, here is a capsule summary of a few cures for the "Would-Buts."

• Own reusable bags. It may seem obvious, but if you don't have a set of reusable bags you will never remember to bring them into the store. You can make them yourself -- as a surprising number of folks do -- or collect them from all sorts of advertisers, or just vow to buy one (1) each time you shop for, oh say, two months.



• Own More Bags Than You Think You Will Need Reusable cloth bags get used for all sorts of things, especially transporting gear to special events or stuff to work or school. When a bag is otherwise engaged, it cannot be used for groceries. Also, we have found the most effective technique is to keep a set of bags in each car, and one or two sets in the house.


• Use Fewer Bags Than You Thought You Would Reusable cloth bags hold a lot of stuff. Four Trader Joe's-size canvas bag hold as much 10-12 of the plastic flimsies. So, even if you only have one bag -- take it! It makes a big difference. (Note: If you buy eight bags as noted in "Own More" above, you will have two sets.)


• Torture People If you have not yet come out as a green, reusable bags can be a little, well, embarrassing. So, turn the tables. Deliberately bring your reusable bag with you into a store that doesn't seem all treehugger-ish. Smugly watch the checker struggle with your reusable, maybe even trying to stuff their plastic bags into your cloth one. Kindly, but with unmistakable surprise and disdain, comment that those plastic bags will be illegal soon. Realize that now that you are outed, you can be your sustainable-self anywhere.


• Torture People II Take your reusable into a store that sells reusable bags but is not yet particularly sustainable . Watch the people in line eyeing your bag. Feel paranoid and embarrassed at being such a Green Goofball -- for a split second. Then accept the checker's heartfelt "Oh good! You have a bag!" Answer the follow-up quip from the person behind you that they "never remember to bring their bags" with equanimity and encouragement. Remember that that person was you yesterday!

In all seriousness, the reusable bag would-buts fall into three major categories -- old habits, self-justification (not enough bags, too many needed), and embarrassment at looking like an enviro-loon. None are insurmountable. You know you have made it to the sustainable place when you make an unexpected stop, feel just a little upset that you had to take a plastic bag for something that you couldn't at least carry away without a bag!

Do Nothing, Save the World! "Black Friday" Goes Green on Buy Nothing Day

Reduce, reuse, recycle.

Of this triple mantra "reduce" is, in some ways, the hardest for folks to find quick and easy ways to implement in one's daily life.

Reducing consumption often feels too much like some sort of deprivation. For my grandparents, who lived through the Great Depression and WWII privations, the concept of thriftiness and making do with what you have was common sense.

But for that generation, and for many of their children, those days are over and the idea of voluntarily doing without where there is no imminent and identified threat is anathema.

Similarly, their grandchildren (my generation) were born in an era of plenty, grew up into the 1980s boom, and with the exception of gas rationing in the early 70's, have lived comfortably, even lavishly, without great difficulty.

Now, there are many ways to reduce consumption. But the whole thing starts with awareness. As noted in a previous post, The Story of Stuff is great introduction to the problem of over consumption. But it's not very specific, or personal. So here's a personal statement to make to remind yourself -- and our consumer driven culture -- that as people we are more than the sum of our stuff:

Celebrate "Buy Nothing Day," November 28

Stay home. Decline to participate in the consumer madness retailer's call "Black Friday," known as The Day After Thanksgiving to you and me. Stay home and make a present. Read a book (from the library of course).

Sure, plenty of people stay home to avoid the traffic and insanity, so don't celebrate Buy Nothing Day alone. Copy and reproduce the graphic below as your email signature for the next three weeks . . . remind folks -- and oneself -- that "reduce" is the first and most useful of the triple-mantra.

Going to miss a sale? Probably. But frankly, in most cases it will be cheaper later if you decide it is something you really do need. And by explicitly declining to participate in Black Friday we send a reminder to the industry and ourselves that a sustainable future is the, in the long run, the only future.

.

NOVEMBER 28, 2007

Going Green: Are We There yet?

We are a just one family trying to make the transition from an unsustainable lifestyle to a reasonable one, and this blog has chronicled some of our discoveries and experiences about the "easy" green things to do.

We still are not as green as some, much more green than others. The journey continues.

Meanwhile, contemplating what to do next it occurred to me that we had hit a plateau; we seem to have maxed out most of the easy options, and our next steps are all a bit bigger.

Buying that electric car, for example -- either the all-electric pickup truck here, or (the one I really want) the Aptera, here -- is a step we are not ready to take right now. (Mostly because we are not ready to buy a new car.) Or making a commitment to 100% sustainable food options --organic, local grown, fair trade, etc. (Largely because some clean foods are still priced in the region of luxury items, and we just can't justify the cost; in other cases we have our over-processed, chemically grown food vices we are not willing to give up.)

"What next?" I have recently asked myself.

It's hard to know where to go if you don't know where you have been, so in a coming post I hope to review the sustainable elements we already have in place, list-style, and "wish-list" those we want to implement, and set some goals and priorities.

In the meantime, I will note that we have achieved something like success on overcoming one of the three main obstacles to sustainability, a green mindset. We (and I include most of our family members most of the time in this "we") have reached a stage where we have internalized the concepts of sustainability such that when only non-sustainable options are available we at least have the good grace to cringe, and may, in fact, skip buying or using or doing something at all until we can do it cleanly.

Three Obstacles and an Objection

What are the three main obstacles you say? Well, one is obviously Mindset. This itself includes several elements, not all of which can be achieved at once: The recognition of the basic need to live sustainably is the beginning; an understanding and awareness of the natural cycles that affect our lives and make our lifestyles possible helps; a commitment to live so as to not affect those cycles adversely; and finally, the integration of those things into one's life so completely and seamlessly that it happens without much conscience effort, as a way of living not something layered over an existing non-sustainable lifestyle.

The next obstacle is Cost. This includes the sometimes actual additional cost of a more sustainable product, but also includes upfront costs on retrofitting sustainable solutions for long term savings. (The latter can be legislated away, in part, by rules requiring deeply sustainable new construction, for example, and retrofit-on-sale type rules.) Cost also includes the more common "wrongly perceived additional cost," which is related to (because it fails to account for) hidden additional costs and public subsidies for unsustainable practices.

Hidden additional costs include things like personal illness from chronic ingestion of chemical food, to higher costs of education for masses of kids developing learning disabilities due to poor chemical nutrition. Hidden costs include indirect subsidies such as allowing free waste "disposal" by dumping it into the air and water. And they can include taxpayer-paid subsidies for certain products or industries known to be unsustainable and which would be economically unsustainable but for the hidden subsidy.

Availability is the final obstacle. Sometimes one wants to do the sustainable thing, but finds that manufactured products or those one chooses not to make for oneself by hand, are simply not available. From time to time clean technology is hard to find; green options are not very green. One does what one can to encourage products and services in this vein, and moves forward. (This obstacle should not be confused with the false objection and/or "would-but" that relieves one of the need to find a sustainable product or service because it is more difficult to locate than the unsustainable variety.)

Finally, The Objection is a really any one or more of a large set of (false) rationalizations for ignoring the need for sustainability. The Objection has many causes and guises, and although rightly a part of the Mindset obstacle, often seems to act as a block to sustainability.

Within The Objection sometimes is a belief that the deity gave man dominion over the earth and its resources -- and thus humans may loot and pillage that trust property without guilt.

There is also the (sometimes deliberate) confusion of "Sustainable Impact" with "No Impact." Every plant and animal has an impact on the environment, and a role to play in natural cycles; we need not eliminate ours, merely change and moderate ours so that it does not threaten to destroy us and the system of which we are a part. The sneering taunt "your locally grown, organic hemp reusable bag used resources, so why should I feel guilty about a plastic bag?" is an example of this confusion.

Which bring up the fact that Guilt is another factor that motivates the basic Objection response. So much about sustainability implies that if one has been doing something in a non-sustainable manner for years one must be a bad person, stupid, or maybe even malicious. People don't accept guilt readily.

Finally, sometimes the Objection comes down to simple embarrassment: Caring for the environment is seen as a weak, touchy-feely, tree-huggerish, emotion-laden activity -- which is inconsistent with the aggressive self-image that seems to dominate popular culture.

One rarely encounters a person for whom The Objection can be removed directly. Largely it is a matter of finding a point of entry to an Objector's world view, and finding sustainable practices that are consistent with it. Once the Objection is overcome, even a little, it is simply a matter of working on the Three Obstacles one bit at a time.

With this grounding then, we can look to my households current and future practices and see where to go next . . . for a sustainable, not an undetectable, interaction with our biosphere.

Coming Soon: The Checklist: The Good, the Bad, the Etc.

"Klean" Water Saves Kash $$$

A while back, I wrote about giving up on plastic water bottles. Given our current rate of use, our cool reusable water bottles will have saved us $532 this year, and kept at least 1,825 plastic bottles from being created, or buried in the landfill.

The original post went into some detail on why single-use plastic bottles are bad; here is the nutshell version in case you didn't see the original:

Plastic manufacturing pollutes and uses oil and oil related resources; plastic is suspected of poisoning people by leaching into food; plastic does not break down in either the landfill or the environment, adding toxic chemicals and simple trash to the landscape; and even recycling those bottles use significant energy, create significant pollution, and creates other plastic products that in turn cause all the aforementioned problems.

Although steel has some significant environmental drawbacks in manufacturing, the steel bottles lack the other issues, can be reused hundreds of times (thus spreading the cash and environmental cost out over time), will degrade in nature and landfills (if they wind up there at all), and recycle very easily.

How do we use our bottles? We fill them from the tap and stick them in the refrigerator. That’s it.

Wash them with hot water and soap, refill them. Sometimes we refill them several times during the day, or swap out an empty for a cold, full one.

We calculated that we use each of our five bottles an average once per day (allowing for days when all five got refilled three or four times in summer, and days in winter when only two or three get used a single time). Thus 365 x 5 bottles = 1,825 plastic bottles we did not buy last year. At our local Trader Joe’s a case of bottled water the same size as our steel bottles works out to just over 29 cents per bottle. Thus, 1,825 x $0.29 = $532 in savings last year alone.

Now our bottles were gifts, so our initial cost was zero, but even at the approximately $20 each that they cost at full Internet retail (with shipping), we would have had a net savings in year one of $432, with an additional $532, per year, for the next several years.

Or, another way to look at it is that, in the first year, our amortized cost was about 5½ cents per fill, plus less than ½ cent for the water, so maybe about 6 cents per bottle-full. By December 2009, our cost will be down to about 3 cents for each use over the two years, including water. And if we use the bottles a third year, we pay less than 2½ cents per bottle. If the bottles last five years, at this rate that is less than 1½ cents per bottle of water!

And of course that calculation does not include the $1.00 or more each for bottles of water we did not buy at Disneyland, or the gas station, or the many other special events we’ve attended where water was wanted and for sale at absurd prices.

A good deal all around.

Plastic Bag Ban for Pasadena Considered

In a mostly unheralded decision last week, a subcommittee of Pasadena's Environmental Advisory Commission voted to recommend the complete ban of single-use plastic shopping bags for retail establishments in Pasadena.

The Waste Reduction, Transportation & Environmental Health (WRTEH) Committee held nearly 18 months of monthly hearings, including two large public hearing events with panelists from local markets and representatives of the plastic bag industry.

Among other startling factors, the Committee discovered that some 86 million one-use plastic bags are used and discarded in Pasadena alone. Of those, 81 million end up in the landfill, or as litter, every year.

At a future EAC meeting the WRTEH Committtee will recommend that the full Commission take additional public input, and then take action on a general WRTEH recommendation to outlaw single use plastic bags in Pasadena.

The WRTEH committee will leave some of the details of any Commission recommendation to be worked out by the full Commission, but is expected to recommend:

(1) a ban on single use plastic bags by all retail establishments and vendors licensed by the city;

(2) a ban on single-use paper bags with less than 40% post-consumer recycled content; and

(3) a fee, possibly $.25 per bag, on permitted paper bags.

The are a number of considerations being balanced in the recommendation. Among other things, when the entire life cycle of single-use plastic is considered and compared to that of a single use paper bag, plastic creates a worse environmental detriment. Paper, at least, bio-degrades both in the landfill and when released into the environment. Indeed, paper can be backyard composted. Moreover, recycling rates for paper are high, whereas even with the recent state-law mandating large-store recycling, only 5% of plastic bags have been recycled statewide.

Since the most sustainable practice is reusable cloth bags that are actually reused, both paper and plastic are subject to reduction efforts.

Great Minds, Would-Buts, and a Livable Hometown

Back in February 2007 I mentioned something I called the "Would-Buts" that prevent us from talking sustainable action or making livable choices (See "Get off Your Would-But and DO Something"); in the "great minds think alike" catagory, we now have a list of "seven buts" that might stop you from making your hometown less noxious.

Since there is no point in my repeating what was said on ChelseaGreen.com, I commend this article "The Seven “Buts” Blocking Your Town’s Transition Off Oil" to you, as well as my original "would-buts."

Go on, get off your "would but" and read 'em!

Letting it Rot: Composting in a Techno Century

Here is an easy green exercise that handles several core greenie values all at once: compost your kitchen scraps.

Now before you dust off that "would-but" and laugh, let me remind you what a little simple composting does for one's green-foot-print.

First, it takes stuff out of the landfill. Some 8-10% of most city trash is easily compostable vegetable matter (setting aside woody things like branches and stuff). Next, it returns nutrients to the soil instead of putting it out of reach of plants and bugs, which in turn can reduce your own need for chemical and petroleum-based fertilizer. And finally, as you become more aware of the compostable food you waste -- and we all do -- it is easier to get motivated to be a little more careful in one's consumption.

What is composting? In a nutshell, vegetable matter like grass clippings and carrot peelings and coffee grounds are dumped in a special container and they rot. As they rot they get hot; the heat kills germs and helps the stuff rot more. Eventually all that rot decomposes into finished compost -- something you can pay extra for at the garden store in 1.5 cubic foot bags!

There are three basic methods to compost: (1) ground contact (2) sealed and (3) worm bin. We can talk more about worms another time, which leaves only the first two as Easy Green options.

In ground composting, one piles up the compostibles, keeps the pile moist, and it rots. Insects, worms and the like help with the decomposition. Microbes in the soil do likewise. After awhile you have good clean organic fertilizer.

In the old fashioned version this was done in open piles. There are potential health and animal issues though, so these days it is possible to buy prefab plastic bins, about the size of a trash can, open to the earth, in which to compost. Simplicity: Small, neat. Little or no smell, if you keep it mixed. We fill and empty about 1 1/2 - 2 such bins each year, depending on how often I mow the lawn.

Sealed composters, usually some sort of tumbler, range in size and complexity. A simple one is about half the size of the ground-contact composter and can be "rolled" in place. Tumblers often require some kind of microbes to get the process jump started, and do not, usually, have help from bugs and worms. Still, they seem to do a fine job, and can even be used on an apartment patio or car port without the need for ground contact. (Above, right, in neglected corner of the yard is our ground-contact composter and a handy "mixing rod.")

Add a bucket for daily scraps in the kitchen -- we use a restaurant container that does not hold smells available at Smart & Final, among other places. (Manufactured by Cambro, intended for salad bars and the like.) Other compost buckets can include elements to reduce smells, but in my experience if one can smell a compost bucket it needs to be emptied.

So, every day or two, the compost bucket goes into the bin; leaves and grass clippings go into the bin, along with some shredded newspaper and a little water. Every week or two a quick stir, et voila, reduced waste stream and excellent organic fertilizer. The tumbler-style even eliminate the need even for additional stirring!


Here (below, left) is a photo of about 10 gallons of compost, about one summer's worth of grass clippings and food prep scraps for us. It looks like a rich, dark, clean planting mix -- because that is exactly what it is!


Local county governments have tons of info. Basic composters like the one pictured here are available at numerous places online, and even at local Orchard Supply Hardware store and some garden supply centers.

The most interesting thing is that composting gets you instant green-cred among even die-hard treehuggers, many of whom are stuck on their own "would-buts" when it comes to this easy activity. The look of horror and scrambling for excuses when one asks, ever-so-casually "oh, do you compost?" is priceless . . . so long as too many people don't figure out that it is both an easy and effective way to reduce your trash and fertilizer bill.

The Story of Stuff (Yours and Mine)

Now that the holiday gift giving frenzy is over, and resolution making time is upon us, it would be a good time to try to be more mindful of the amount of pure STUFF we accumulate, eco-stuff and otherwise.


When you have 15 minutes or so (now would be a good time!) click-on over to The Story of Stuff, a really neat, engaging little animation / movie that at the very least will getcha thinking about it all.

Water Without Poison: Avoiding Plastic-Bottled Water

Clean, cold water. It's good stuff -- unless you pollute it or the greater environment by drinking it from a plastic bottle!

In a previous post, it was noted that plastic reusable coffee cups were not preferred over metal. (See below for details of why.) So it is a bit ironic that folks who drink bottled water instead of tap water or soda for health reasons often do so by drinking water sold in little plastic bottles.

As with most of our disposable, chemicalized culture there is a green alternative available: The reusable, stainless steel water bottle.

But first, a reminder of why plastic is bad . . . .

Plastics = Poison?

The question over plastic products poisoning packaged food and water is one reason to avoid plastic water bottles. Although various mechanisms have been suggested for plastic byproducts leaching into bottled water (leaving bottles in hot cars, re-using plastic bottles), Snopes.com purports to have debunked these.

Other sources of plastic-based poison remain; see for example the very even-handed article at the National Geographic "Green Guide" on the most recent findings of reproductive harm from plastics. As the article notes, 100% of plastics-industry studies find no chemical leaching, and 100% of government funded studies find harmful chemicals. Hmmmm.

Plastics = Oil

Plastic bottles, of course, are made from oil -- and so come with the pollution and carbon overhead of all petroleum products. Although a fraction of Plastic bottles are recycled, for every bottle that is reused there said to be the equivalent of 70 bottles of waste generated in the process. In addition, manufacturing plastics requires energy for each bottle; less energy per bottle than a steel one, for example, but not if the steel bottle is reused for its likely long lifetime.

Plastics = Trash

Because the apparent dollar cost of a plastic bottle is low, they are considered one use and disposable. Most plastic bottles end up in landfills, or worse, as non-degradable litter on the landscape or in our waterways. Again, the lifetime of a steel or even glass bottle is many times higher, and thus the embodied energy and pollution is many times lower, than using an equivalent number of plastic containers.

Bottled Water = Transported Water

By now most people are aware that bottled water is not appreciably different than ordinary tap water, at least if you live in a modern American city. (Individual locations and buildings may have specific local ground water or delivery system issues, or unwanted additives.)

For the most part, however, bottled water is not local water; bottled water gets part of its cache by coming from far off exotic locals (Fiji Water, for example, or Perrier, or even simple Arrowhead water). The folks at http://www.thebottledwaterstore.com/ boast that they are "[y]our source for unique high-quality bottled water products from around the world." And that means its value as a "green" commodity is further degraded by the addition of the carbon and oil use from its long distance ride to the market shelf.

(In an interesting study, the National Resources Defense Council has found that 82% of people drink bottled water due to concerns about pollution, as an alternative to other beverages, or both. Only 7% of folks who drink the stuff drink bottled water for the taste, according to the NRDC. Taste, according to the The Bottled Water Store, is a primary reason to drink it -- which leaves some 93% of us able to avoid one-use, transported bottled water. )

Clean Alternatives

More than a few companies sell stainless steel, reusable water bottles, some with sports tops some without. We have five "Klean Kanteens" available from many suppliers online. Ours are not insulated, so are light and small, just like a plastic bottle. We use them only for water, so washing is required from time to time, but not in the same way as if there were three day old fermented juice in them. (We have a two-year-old -- can you tell?)

Many other suppliers also sell other versions. They key is stainless steel over plastic, or aluminum.

Wacky Idea

The idea of reusable water bottles may seem a little weird if you are not a bottled-water fan already. If you drink a bottle of water once in blue moon because you are thirsty and there is nothing else handy at the picnic, then a reusable, non-plastic water bottle may not make sense to you.

But if you are one of those folks that buys water by the case, who always has a water bottle handy to sip at in order to stay well hydrated or as an alternative to soda or alcohol -- then you will find a reusable bottle is a small step indeed.

Coffee Tastes Better Green

I like coffee. I like it a lot. For years I have struggled with a Starbucks habit; my youngest was practically raised by baristas during my year off work as a stay-at-home dad, and by the age of one she knew the Starbucks logo well enough to exclaim with glee when we passed one. ( A "vente" cup of hot water makes a superb bottle warmer, by the way. See my old sbxfairtrade blog for handy hints if you are a stay at home dad.)

Thankfully, however, I have managed to ratchet my Starbucks habit way down over the past year. Oh I still drink coffee everyday, but thanks to a serendipitous gift of a reusable mug last year, my growing green sentiment, and the realization of the budgetary effects of store-brewed coffee, I only occasionally indulge in a stop at the "coffee store."

Green Issues, Black Coffee

Coffee is an interesting beverage in many eco-respects, as it embodies several different green issues. Correcting even a few of the bad things about the way you get your caffeine fix can make a big difference.

The issues range from the use of non-recyclable paper cups and plastic lids, to where and how the coffee is grown; from your choice of brewing method to how you keep the java hot. Each separately can be a significant factor in the green-color of your coffee's history. But let's start with one easy one: the kind of cup you use.

Buy the Cup

I was given a gift of a Starbucks brand 16 ounce reusable travel cup last year for a holiday gift. I have used it every day, sometimes several times a day, ever since then.

Our friends over at the Bring Your Own Blog have already made the paper-cup point succinctly.

Which is Greener: Recycled Paper or Reusable?

There are several elements that must be considered to demonstrate that a reusable cup is better than a one-time use cup; most analysis take into consideration only one part of the multifaceted problem.

First is the embodied energy used in manufacturing the cup. A reusable cup will have more energy in its initial manufacture, and has to be washed, but over time it will save energy each over a similar number of paper or foam cups. One major factor is how the cup is washed: I rinse mine daily in warm tap water with a little soap; most studies assume the use of an energy hog dishwasher, albeit a relatively efficient energy hog as those things go.

On this basis, a reusable cup is relatively more energy efficient, at least if it is used repeatedly as intended.

Next is the issue of the resources used to create the cup. Plastic and foams come from oil. In generally, the fewer products made from oil, the better; whether you want to reduce the impact of oil drilling or think gas prices should be lower, less oil for cups is desirable. Paper cups, of course, come from trees, and in some cases a small percentage of post consumer recycled paper.

Then there is the disposal issue. Although paper cups may degrade over time, they take up landfill space in the meantime. And since many paper cups are, in fact, plastic coated, that degradation is not total, or quick. Neither plastic nor foam cups degrade in any reasonable amount of time (hundreds of years even in a landfill), and many spend time drifting around the landscape or floating around the ocean, where they kill wildlife.

Using an average of one disposable cup per day adds in the range of 25 lbs of solid waste to the landfill stream, and creates a larger pool of trash which can becomes "feral" and degrades the environment directly. (See, e.g., Report of the Green Restaurant Association and Report of the Starbucks Coffee Company / Alliance for Environmental Innovation Joint Task Force, p. 8-9.)

Finally, plastic and plastic coated food products have recently been implicated in all sorts of health problems, including reproductive defects in children born to women exposed to certain kinds of plastics. These plastics leach byproducts into our food, and into the environment for as long as they are around.

The Whole Story

Looking at the whole story, then, it is easy to see that the reusable to-go cup is a significant ecological improvement over one-use paper or plastic cups.

Reusable to-go cups also have a psychological advantage, too, by stepping away from the disposable mindset.

Which Reusable Cup?

So far the best reusable cup appears to be stainless steel. This metal is well known to be inert and resistant to just about anything you put in it. It washes up quick and easy by hand, and works equally well with hot and cold drinks. Many coffee outlets sell metal ones . . . to take it one step further, one can skip plastic water bottles too: One supplier of disposable cup and bottle replacements is the KleanKanteen company.

Plastic reusables are, at least, reusable; but since the use of plastic in food products is increasingly suspect, as noted above, a plastic mug cannot be recommended. Ceramic mugs have some of the lowest embodied energy, according to research studies, but for travel a steel mug is extremely durable and about the cleanest choice.

Paper, whether made from all virgin wood or some small percentage "post-consumer recycled content" still contains a lot of new tree material, and requires a reasonable amount of water and energy to make into each new cup, even with recycled content.

My stainless steel travel mug took a lot of energy to make, more than a few paper cups worth, certainly. But it's energy cost is spread out over hundreds of cups of coffee and years of use. And there is an additional benefit: I never throw it away (at least until it finally wears out), so it does not add to a landfill or pollute the local environment they way disposables do.

And yes, that cardboard cup almost certainly gets buried in a landfill somewhere. Even if you rinse the cup and toss it in your recycle bin, more likely than not this is not helping: Most paper products used for food are not recycled. Greasy pizza boxes and used paper cups are routinely plucked from the paper recycling by most companies and disposed of as simple landfill garbage.

Although plastic food containers can sometimes be recycled, and most plastic cups have a recycling number on the bottom, many many jurisdictions do not accept them, and few recycle the kind of foam from which foam cups are made.

Moreover, plastic cups get into the environment by accident too (or deliberate littering) and do not decompose at all. Instead they wash into storm drains, helping to clog them, and as often as not wash right out to sea.

It hardly seems like a big deal, but there is, after all, a lot riding on the cup from which you drink your coffee. And somehow that morning cup 'o joe just tastes better green.

Skip the Plastic! Let's Talk Reusable Cloth Bags . . .

It's a funny thing about Americans. We expect free paper or plastic bags to carry home whatever we buy at a store. And the thing is, both kinds of bags are a terrible waste of resources. So here's an Easy Green Thing to Do: Bring Your Own Cloth (or string) Bags.

Sounds simple minded, but take a look at the counter in the right-hand column. According to the folks at www.reusablebags.com, that is the number of plastic bags that have been used, and mostly tossed into the landfill or allowed to destroy marine environments, so far this year.

That's a lot. And the number is getting bigger. If you have 6-8 plastic bags from grocery shopping today, and another of two or three from other stores, and one for the thingmabobber from the hardware store and and and -- well it adds up!

Three reasons to bring your own reusable cloth bags:

1. Plastic bags are mostly made from oil. The folks at MidAmerica Energy explain this in detail here or by clicking their picture, above. The fewer plastic bags we use the less we need oil from the Middle East, the less fossil fuel pollution we create, and the less energy we use manufacturing and transporting the darn things in the first place.

2. Some plastic shopping bags can be recycled. Most are not. Less than 10% of plastic bags are currently recycled. Some city trash collections, even though they accepted numbered plastics, do not do plastic shopping bags.

3. Plastic ends up in the landfill, and does not decompose (paper can be recycled and does decompose. Cloth can be reused thousands of times). It is also a notorious killer of marine animals, being washed down the storm drains and into the oceans.

Dealing With The Would-Buts

I would use cloth bags, but:

. . . I don't have any reusable bags. Many stores sell them cheaply now. An early pioneer was Trader Joe's, which has sold its (now larger and stronger) cloth shopping bags for many years. I am partial to the canvas bags, but there are many alternatives available at TJ's. We recently purchased a $4.99 insulated bag from TJ that handles all the cold stuff quite well if we have an extra stop on the way home. Ikea now sells it's store bags and is phasing out plastic; many reusables with cool art can be found at CafePress.com, including www.cafepress.com/walkstuff; and of course our good friends at www.reusablebags.com/ . For more ideas have a peak at the Bring Your Own blog.

. . . I don't want to buy $30 worth of bags. Don't. Buy one at a time. Each trip to the store, get one more new cloth bag. Soon you will have plenty of bags. NOTE: You will need fewer cloth bags than either paper or plastic, if you can carry them. Each bag is stronger and can hold more than either paper or trash-plastic. If you want lighter bags to carry, bring more bags.

. . . I can never remember to bring them. Simple: Leave a nest of 4 or 5 bags in the trunk of your car, or the bike trailer you use for groceries. Put them all inside of one and roll 'em up. When you empty the bags in the house after shopping, put them *right* back in the car. Then they are always handy.

Bringing shopping bags has gotten to be so easy, that we take our TJ bags -- and reusable bags we have received elsewhere -- in to shop just about everywhere now. It may just be *one* little plastic bag -- but take a look at that counter over there, spinning by, one little bag (your little bag!) at time.

By the by, the cloth-bag habit is a good one to start now. Several cities have banned plastic shopping bags outright, and many more are looking at the idea seriously.

A word of warning about reusable bags, though: Be sure to save some for shopping. They are so handy, and so easy to grab, that they get used for all sorts of transporting jobs -- and you can and that all your shopping bags are otherwise engaged!

How to Get Off Your "Would But" and Start Doing Something

I Would But . . .

You know you should do it (whatever green thing “it” is) and you would but, well this thing and that thing and the other thing really make it impossible for you to do right now.

Welcome to Stage One Denial.

I’ve been there; every time I stop doing some green thing for awhile, I go through it again to get started. Breaking through Stage One Denial -- the "would-buts" -- is the hardest part of doing the green thing, at least sometimes.

An Example: Bike to Work Day, Just Today.

Take, for example, the green goal of riding a bike to work. Last summer I rode nearly every day to work. It was hot, but bearable. I got to wear summer clothes to work (shorts, polo shirt) so it was a fairly comfortable bike drive.

But the fact that I had to carry a laptop to work every day changed the ride. I was nervous carrying it unpadded in a backpack. (The computer case I had weighed a great deal, so I did not want to carry it on the bike.) And the backpack made me really hot. Although I rode most days in the summer anyway, the laptop-in-the-backpack became my “would-but” for the fall semester.

In the fall semester, without a way to carry my laptop conveniently, I rode a car to work every day. I would have driven my bike, but carrying the laptop was a problem. See how this works?

Over Christmas I received a really cool Jandd pannier bag. Folds up to look like a canvas briefcase, has a padded holder for a laptop, and a built in waterproof cover(!)

This week, my laptop and I drove a bike to work every day.

How about you?

What’s your bike-riding “would-but?”

For most of us it is one of these top ten:

1. “I don’t have a bike.”
2. “I have a bike, but I haven’t ridden it in years.”
3. “I’m scared of the cars.”
4. “I have to work in dress clothes, like a suit or high heels.”
5. “I work too far away.”
6. “I have to carry stuff to work.”
7. “I have kids to pick up.”
8. “The weather is too severe.”
9. “There is nowhere to park a bike when I get there.”
10. “I have bad knees/back/balance and can’t ride.”

I have used at least seven, maybe seven and a half of these personally.

We’ll deal with these Top Ten Would-But excuses in future posts. For the moment it is enough to recognize a "would but" excuse for what it is – a temporary obstacle to be overcome. And once overcome, most of these would-buts seem terribly insubstantial.

In general, though, the top suggestions for more bike driving are to get a good used cruiser bike if you don’t own one (try www.freecycle.org for a potential free bike!), or clean yours off and get it out of the garage! Drive your bike on weekends from time to time to get back in the groove; find a “Road Cycling” course online to help you understand and deal with the driving a bike instead of a car for transportation -- versus riding a bike for fun only.

_____________________

COMING SOON: Puncturing the First Five "Would But" Excuses . . . .

IDEA: Green Your Brain!

Going green is all the rage, but many still see the process as all sacrifice and conservation -- when nothing could be further from the truth.

What is wanted is a simple but complete change of mindset that allows one to make green choices without particular sacrifice, and as second nature.

The culture of waste and despoliation of the planet has been in place a long time, however, and such a fundamental change can be frightening, even daunting.

Even the mental change to so-called "conservation" can be daunting, not the least because it carries images of sacrifice and deprivation. It (wrongly) foreshadows the end of America as the land of endless everything.

Worse, mere conservation is, in fact, an inadequate response to a growing population made up of folks who each also want a growing piece of the pie.

Again, what is needed is a change of mind, as much as a change of habit.

One Example

Consider: At my house, according to the electric company, we've managed to conserve 90% (yes, ninety percent) on our electric bill last year. Even with the hottest summer on record this year and the AC running 24/7, we are on track this year to "save" 50% of the electricity we would have used in the past.

But we've made NO sacrifices. Really.

We have made a green choice that was so painless, and seems like such a no-brainer from our changed mindset, that we don't understand why most homeowners, builders and city governments haven't made the choice too.

Remember: No sacrifices.

We have only one compact fluorescent light bulb on in the house, have four TVs, five computers, and a microwave, central air and heat that runs non-stop. We have kids who leave the lights on. Our change costs us only about $40 per month, and has reduced our electric bill by 90 percent.

We have solar cells.

We didn't want the approximately 70% coal-fired electricity that our local utility offers. It didn't make sense when there was an affordable option.

Forty bucks a month -- with price rises, ever, and no coal.

And because right now we can afford to do so, we splurged and pay a tiny premium to the electric utility for wind and small hydro for our remaining electricity.

No Pain, All Gain

Although Pasadena gets nearly 70% of its electricity from coal, ours is 100% renewable, clean and green. No sacrifice. No actual conservation. No big deal.

And it is no big deal precisely because we have come about half-way 'round to changing our mindset.

Awareness of one's impact; a commitment to minimizing the impact; and, in these early decades of serious environmental change, a commitment to push past "business as usual" mindsets to get the green thing, or do the green thing wherever possible.

Green. It's all in your head, really.

Five Percenters, Changing the World

The premise of this blog is that if one makes a few, easy green changes and choices, the few easy things will add up to a whole lot more than the parts.

Turns out, at least a few folks have invented a term for it, calling it the "Five Percent" approach.

Blogger Noreen's Five Percent (which I stumbled across four or five links down into a read of some favorite eco-blogs) uses this as her premise:

Imagine if every single person on the planet invested 5% of their
energy in working toward a better self and a better world. I decided to try it,
since it's something I can do not just once, but every single day. These are the
stories of the little efforts I'm making while living my ordinary life. I'd love
to meet you along the way!

She's been offline since August, but her blog has some great back-posts, and a host of neat "impact" links, which are worth a look-see.

Another way to look at the 5% is what I call the "stone soup" effect. If you don't know the story of Stone Soup, you can read it here. But in a nutshell, but doing things one little bit at a time, moving reluctant change slowly and stepwise, it is possible to create something larger and more magnificent than anyone thought possible.

Easy Green is a reference of some of the things one person can do to do one's own 5%.

QUICK GREEN: Change Your City!

It turns out, maybe the easiest way to be green is to change your city's culture so that the city government helps you do it.

At the city level, it is shockingly easy to have a voice, and an impact. It may not seem that way to someone not currently involved in local city politics or policies, but that is usually a misimpression.

One of the easiest methods is to find a city web page and discover who is in charge of issues that are important to you, and email away. In addition to department heads, Mayors, City Council members, and City Managers should all be on your one-person email campaign list.

Some things to consider emailing about:

1. Walkable, livable cities (requires special attention at the Planning and Transportation departments for creating a human scale environment);

2. Green building requirements, such as LEED certification or mandatory solar, for new construction;

3. Municipal Utility policies: Renewables mix, solar incentives, more.

4. City operational concerns, ranging from efficient use of natural resources to reducing emissions from city equipment like buses or skiploaders.

In the City of Pasadena, there are also a number of commissions -- staffed by citizen volunteers, not politicians -- to which you can take your ideas and concerns.

These quasi-insiders can often translate your issue into terms that the local government can work with effectively. They can also become a champion of your issue, and came at the issue from the inside, at the same time you work on the outside.

Some recent examples: The City of Pasadena recently became signatory to a UN document setting goals for combating global warming; and after citizen input the City dropped efforts to extend coal generation contracts for the local electric utility. ("No new coal" is now the official city policy(!).)

Bring your city around on key issues, and help yourself -- and thousands of your neighbors -- to an easy, Green future!