Stick A Cork In It

Most of us probably recycle our wine bottles. (If you don’t, what is the matter with you? Seriously.) Now we can recycle old corks too! A non-profit called Cork ReHarvest is helping to collect back some of the 13 BILLION natural corks produced every year. The program collects used corks and works with recycling centers to turn them into floor tiles, coaster and even shipping materials. http://www.corkreharvest.org/ will tell you which wine stores in your area are collection sites.

Bird Brain

So I love birding. Most of my friends know and tolerate this weirdness. But as much as I like watching birds, I've never had a real bird feeder, just plates filled with birdseed on the deck. So on Wednesday I went to my local Wild Birds, Birds, Birds Everywhere Unlimited or whatever its called and bought myself a real birdfeeder.


Since I can’t really hang from or nail anything to the brand new siding on my deck, I needed to get a feeder I could put on a table. Who knew there were so many kinds of birdfeeders? At first I thought I would just take a few snaps and have my mom make me another ghetto item from her woodshop, and I may still do that. But I decided to be a big girl and buy one too.

There are some very elaborate ones, with porches and night lights and others that are like squirrel-proof or some bullshit. Last week I would have scoffed at these as too fancy. HOWEVER. Last Thursday, Fatty and I noticed at nearly the exact same moment as we watched NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams on TV, there was a GODDAMN SQUIRREL ON THE DECK! How did a GD squirrel get on the THIRD FLOOR deck, you ask? I asked it too. It seems that my horrible neighbors with the awful screaming children and the ugly barking naked dog have allowed their tree to grow so much that the GD squirrels can now leap from the branches on to my deck. I’m not quite sure what I am going to do about this, but it will be broughten.

ANYWAY, back to birdfeeders. I looked at them all and I landed on a small Hanging Tray. Makes sense, right? It’s a tray, with no top, that can be set on the table and I can remove the little hanger thingers. Best of all? Made in the USA from 98% recycled materials!!

On to birdseed. They advertised a kind of seed that squirrels don’t like. Sold.

By the time I got home it was dark, so I put the feeder and seed out on the deck and hoped for the best. 

I went home at lunch today and saw birds on my new feeder! Three chickadees!  SUCCESS!!  And no squirrels. 

Recycling Memories

As you may have heard, my last grandparent died on Monday. Grandma Rae was 98 years old and perfectly healthy right up until her slight stroke two weeks ago. Her only health issues in the last few years were a deteriorating hip from a previous break, leading to some falls. We decided after the last fall in June that she could no longer safely live on her own, and she was moved into a nursing home.

Nursing home rooms are small. She was lucky enough to have a private room, but still, it’s small. One piece of her furniture fit, my grandpa’s bureau. So what do we do with an apartment full of stuff? My parents have their home fully furnished the way they wanted, I didn’t really have room for any more in my apartment and my sister isn’t really in a position to take any furniture since she lives in a closet in San Francisco. But we can’t just get rid of it. Her furniture is all very nice and most of the pieces are antiques from her family. So I am taking the breakfront and the matching buffet, as well as a small delicate chair and some ginger-jar lamps. I will make them fit.

She also has a lot of art and important pieces from her and my grandpa’s and their families’ travels and vacations and there are many things in her apartment that bring up fond memories. The small yellow jade snuffbox with the bright green stopper was my favorite-favorite thing to look at among the many Asian treasures they collected over the years.

The delicate Dresden ballerinas remind me of the very rare occasions we were allowed in the formal living room at their farmhouse in Door County. She got very angry if you picked them up the wrong way! (You pick them up by the heads, so the china lace doesn’t break) These figurines were made in the 1800s and the factory was destroyed in the war. They are very precious to me and I am so happy my dad allowed me to have them.

The small china cat and kitten curled up by the fireplace. We always went in and petted them when we arrived.

The octagon-shaped glass plates remind me of the yummy ham sandwiches she would make for lunch. She would toast the bread, slather on butter and cut them into four squares.

We always had fruit at her house too. My grandpa grew up on a fruit ranch in Washington and brought his love of fruit trees to the farmhouse in Northern Wisconsin. She taught me to pit cherries with a paperclip. We would pick wild strawberries by the side of the road when we took the dogs for a walk. She called me the Cool Whip Kid because I loved it so much on strawberries.

The green plastic juice glass with the drawings of citrus on them remind me of breakfast in the farmhouse kitchen: butter in the rooster-shaped butter dish, milk in the cow-shaped creamer, grandma’s fifty vitamins lined up next to her glass of OJ and red-breasted grosbeaks mobbing the birdfeeder outside the window.

So I will try to remember these good memories when I think of my grandma from now on. I know many of you have heard stories about the not-so-nice aspects of her personality. (Perhaps SMP should get the bureau with the drawers where she was forced to sleep as a baby) But as Heidi and I drive together every day, I will endeavor to remember the generousness and forget the rest.

E-mazing

I want an e-reader. Bad. And, so, ok, fine. I am not going to lie to you. I probably only want one because they are cool and new and shiny and fun. I don’t know if I would even like reading books on an e-reader. I love to read and I love reading actual books. I love buying books too. I have too many, but I like having them in my house. I blame my mother. You should see her office. But this, I have discovered, makes me a bad consumer. I should just go to the library. But I want to HAVE them. I’m such a capitalist. I will say, however, that the books I keep I read over and over. And over.  I'm looking at you, Harry Potter.

Since they are expensive, I probably won’t be getting an e-reader anytime soon. But here is an interesting article on Slate asking this important question: which is better for the environment, books/newspapers/ magazines or a Kindle? It’s a valid question. But, you have to decide which you are more interested in, saving carbon in the form of emissions from electricity (powering the e-reader) or saving carbon in the form of trees (books and newspapers) or saving pollution from the electronics manufacturing process (heavy metals and e-waste) or saving pollution from the books transportation process (petroleum and tailpipe emissions) and etc. (Also? Ninety-five percent of US magazines are printed on virgin paper. That’s fewer than 200 out of 17,000. FAIL)

If I win the lottery and buy a Kindle or a Nook or an iPad or a whatever, I might read books on them. I certainly can’t deny that they are handy. It’s much easier to stick one of them in my purse than that giant An Echo in the Bone I am about to read (again). Barnes and Noble started giving away their electronic classics books for free a few weeks ago and I’m downloading them all to their desktop application. What? I like to plan ahead, ok?  But I also like to read a book in my bed before I fall asleep, so I am not sure I will ever give up a real book.  And Penguin (a division of Pearson!) will probably be really happy to hear that.

Critical Mass

The cordless mouse I use at home has been silently shouting at me for a few days that my batteries are at a CRITICALLY LOW LEVEL. Alright already. I don’t feel like I use a lot of batteries, but I probably use more than a few. I have two in my mouse, four in my keyboard, two in my TV remote, two in my other remote, two in my kitchen clock, one in my clock radio, one in my bureau clock and probably five or six in the various stereo remotes. That’s almost twenty batteries. That’s a lot, I think. And since Hennepin County incinerates its garbage and I don’t want to breathe in burned-up battery acid, I always recycle them. In fact, I so don’t want to breathe burned-up battery acid I have a box at my desk at work for recycling other peoples’ batteries. I take them to Wood Lake Nature Center and dump them in their big bin. I have a bag of my grandma’s hearing aid batteries to take the next time I go to Wood Lake.


Check this cute little guy out. His name is Corky and he is a mouse made of cork and recycled plastic who is entirely powered by his own movement. Genius. Unless he is ridiculously expensive, he will definitely be joining my household and maybe my work life too. What a great idea. 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
I will keep you posted when he is released for sale.

Scotchy, scotch scotch

Thanks to my mom's almost relentless activity on Ancestry.com, we know that her family is almost all from the Isles, and mostly Scotland at that.  (This may explain the freckles and allergy to the sun).  Scotch, or whisky, has been produced in Scotland for hundreds of years. The Gaelic "usquebaugh", meaning "Water of Life", phonetically became "usky" and then "whisky" in English. 

My dad, the actual Scotch addict in the family, is all question-mark, so who knows where he gets his penchant for this delicious amber drink.  He prefers the Glen-'s, while I am a Jack fan myself.  We think he could be Black Irish, with the black hair and sapphire eyes, so that would fit, no?

In addition to its primary use as a drunk-maker, researchers in Scotland have discovered a possible use for the waste created in the distilling process: biofuel!  This is amazing to me.  One article I read said that Scotch-distilling is the most energy (carbon) intensive in all of beveragedom.  If they can nearly or completely offset that activity by burning and selling biofuel, well then Scotch really is a miracle liquid.

Also?  They normally just dump the waste in the sea (!), so now they will be less polluting as well.  Cheers!

So help the environment and have a Jack and water on the rocks on me!  Or with me. Wait, why haven't you bought me a drink yet??

Down to the Last Sushi

At the top of the Atlantic Ocean food chain is the bluefin tuna, a half-ton hunting machine that can accelerate faster than a Porsche.  Yet it is powerless against the appetites for wealthy Japanese diners: Industrial fishing has reduced bluefin numbers by two-thirds in the Mediterranean and 80 percent in the Atlantic.  A fishing ban could restore healthy numbers within a decade, but at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species this March in Qatar, Japan marshaled 68 nations to vote against a ban on international trade in the vanishing fish - after treating them to a bluefin sushi buffet.

What's motivating Japan and the other tuna-fishing nations is more than a taste for raw fish.  Prized bluefin sell at auction in Tokyo for as much as $175,000 apiece.  Presumable the very last bluefin will fetch an even higher price.

Source: Sierra Club magazine, July/August 2010

The Original Recyclers

The Shakopee Mdewankanton Dakota community tries very hard to be self-sufficient.  Having that giant casino helps, no doubt.  They have their own water-treatment plant, DNR department, police and fire, and an energy cooperative.  And I have to say, this energy plant is genius.  All of the materials burned in this plant would just be waste otherwise.  Barley dust from beer production?  Oat hulls from Cheerios?  Genius.

Trees

Let's face it, trees rock.  We all had a favorite tree we climbed as kids.  Mine was a pine tree in the front yard of our house in Golden Valley.  It was sticky, but easy to climb and, more importantly, sit in.  There's a tree outside Kiawah Island that is rumored to be the oldest tree east of the Mississippi.  It's called the Angel Oak.  Here's my grandma standing in front of it:

One of my green cohorts at work, Ann Olson, passed along this cool story about NASA using images of the earth to try and figure out how much carbon is stored in trees and whether these trees can continue to sequester carbon as we continue to emit it..

Green here, green there, green everywhere

I don't think anyone I know is in the construction business, but here are some cool articles about green building and facilities practices.  The office building across the driveway from mine was built to be LEED-certified.  Our landlord is thinking about looking into maybe trying to retro-fit our building as LEED.  We will see.

There are only a few green roofs in Minneapolis.  I think the Minneapolis library is one and I think the Hennepin County Government Center has a little one too.  They seem to be such a smart way to have a little oasis in the city.  NYC has tons, from what I read.

CNN has an article about pollution-eating concrete.  I've previously shared in my Green Team newsletter a carbon-sequestering mineral (all the way to the bottom of the page) that was discovered in Oman, but this seems to have much more of a practical application.  If this is true and isn't astronomically expensive, it could be a miracle.

Finally, the 8200 Normandale Lake Blvd building right down the street from us was recently completed and is another LEED-certified building.  (It also has Parma 8200 which is FAB).   Lindsay Buck passed this article on to me about their ramp offering preferred parking to Eco-vehicles, hybrids, electric and the like.  What I would like to see also or instead is carpool parking.  You can drive the greenest car out there, but if it's still just you in the car...

A Little Un-Green

I wish I was brave enough to bike to work.  I only live about seven miles away, but every street is a major street including the big downhill/uphill of Normandale Blvd.  I'm a chicken.  And lazy.  Also?  I love my car.  I LOVE HER.  And I love driving, even though most people who ride with me think I will stroke out from screaming at other drivers.

Luckily, there appear to be tons of other - better - people than me in the Cities.  Minneapolis was recently named the bikingest city in the nation (YAY!) by Bicycling Magazine.    The awesome people who bike to work instead of driving their car are reducing carbon emissions, reducing traffic, and keeping fit.  Again, jealous.

People also ride some pretty wierd bikes.  But, hey, they're riding.  If you bike to work, or bike to the store, you are awesome.  But stay out of the road and stop running lights and stop signs.  Kisses!!

Green Shopping

When I shop for groceries, I really try to look at the packaging the product comes in.  Cardboard and plastic make up WAY too much of our landfill waste.  Most waste in Hennepin County is incinerated, so think about all the plastic being burned and that smell and the toxins being released in the air over Minneapolis.

Recycling is so easy, but so is thinking ahead.  Yes, I know those cute little applesauce cups fit really well in Junior's lunchbox, but so do reusable Ziploc containers filled from the big glass jar of applesauce.  The website http://www.reusablebags.com/ has so many options it's silly to keep using sandwich bags, plastic water bottles and Saran wrap to store your lunch.  Many stores, including Whole Foods, Rainbow and some Targets, offer plastics recycling.  They will take the plastics that your home recycling company will not, mostly numbers 3 through 7, as well as plastic and paper bags.

Here are some stats I've complied over the years for my newsletter at work.  I call them Little Green Bits.

*Packaging amounts to 32% of Minnesota’s garbage.
*Americans toss out enough aluminum every 3 months to rebuild the entire commercial air fleet.
*Recycling 35% of US trash saves enough energy to fuel six million homes annually, generates $5.2 billion in raw materials each year and reduces vehicle emissions equivalent to taking 36 million cars off the road.
*In one week, the average Minnesotan throws away more than 40 pounds of garbage.
*The garbage generated in Minnesota in one year would fill four lanes of trucks, bumper-to-bumper, stretching from Albert Lea to International Falls.
*Paper and paperboard account for 40% of the garbage in the US.
*If 10,000 people pack their sandwiches in reusable bags every day for a month, we'll keep the weight of one giant panda in sandwich bags from reaching landfills.
*US volunteers collected 3,661,445 pounds of trash during the 2008 International Coastal Cleanup. They found 99 birds tangled in marine debris.
*Compared against a single-use water bottle that is tossed in the garbage, drinking from a reusable water bottle filled with tap water will reduce energy consumption by 85% and greenhouse gasses by 79%.
*Next time you feel thirsty, forgo the bottle and turn on the tap. The EPA’s standards for tap water are more stringent than the FDA’s standards for bottled water.
*Americans throw away 470,000 tons of milk cartons every year.

iPhone Apps

I hate everyone who has an iPhone. I am so jealous of you it makes me ill. I cannot wait until Verizon gets the iPhone, sometime in '11 is the word on the street. Until that glorious day, I am a giant nerd and I save all the cool apps I see. Here are a few that you might be interested in too.

Green apps: I don't know who this Grist is, but he/she/it has complied a list of neato green apps for you here.

CauseWorld helps you donate to your favorite causes just by doing your daily routine, like grocery shopping.

Also for dog and cat lovers, this app helps you donate kibble to shelters just by answering a daily trivia question.

Go outside, because you kids are driving me CRAZY

Even though it is hott as hell outside this week, I still try to go for a walk every day. I love being in nature. We have a great little green area at work, with paths that meander around the ponds and Nine Mile Creek. There are geese and butterflies and songbirds and huge gross carp in the water. It seems like people don't spend any time out side anymore. I encourage you to do it. God, it sure calms me down and you know I need help with that.

If you do decide to go to a park or a nature center, here are some common myths that people still believe. Have fun out in nature. She won't bite. Probably.


6 Common Nature Myths -- Debunked
Advice to ignore while you’re enjoying the outdoors
http://www.nwf.org/News-and-Magazines/National-Wildlife/Outdoors/Archives/2010/Nature-Myths.aspx

Come on, just do a little bit more...

As some of you may know, I am passionate about trying to save/clean-up the environment. I do as much as I can in my own life to be “green”. I recycle all plastics, cans, bottles, bottle caps, paper and cardboard at home (even the TP tube), and I bring a lot home from work to recycle, too. I consider the amount of packaging in a product before I buy it. I donate clothes and household items to the ARC and Bridging rather than throwing them away. At work, I helped start a recycling program, and I am also on the Green Team, where I create and edit a monthly newsletter. I love to bird-watch. In fact, I am almost militantly pro-wildlife. I am anti-hunting; that is why we have grocery stores. This may offend a lot of people, but I almost always side with the animal over the stupid person who got in trouble interacting with said wildlife.

Lately, however, I have been frustrated with the lack of meaningful activities we can do at work and the general apathy of my co-workers. I am beyond frustrated actually. I spend a lot of time on the newsletter and I really enjoy doing it, but I don’t think all the GT members even read it, much less the rest of the employees. People just don’t seem to care. Practically everyone leaves their monitors and desk lights on overnight; one guy even colored in the button on his monitor so no one could tell that he leaves it on. That was kind of the last straw.

So I decided that I am going to go outside the company and do my own thing by starting a blog. I will post interesting news stories, tips, slideshows and ideas about the environment and wildlife. It will make me feel good to share good news along with the work that still needs to be done.

I am not perfect; I fricken LOVE to drive Heidi’s big turbo engine and there isn’t much better than a McDonald’s hamburger. But I am trying and the stuff I do is EASY. I hope this will inspire you to try a little bit too. Thanks. bp