A Deeper Green

Dear Ask-A-Brekke,

Are there any ways I can heat/cool my house greenly without too much effort/cost?

Thanks!

Home heating and cooling is always a bit difficult to do if you are not interested in putting in a lot of effort or money. One of the best ways to insure eco-friendly climate control is great insulation and well sealed doors and windows. This keeps cool air in when you want it and out when you want it. But since we are going cheap and since its quite warm outside, let’s start with some cheap and easy ways to cool you and your home.

- Fans! They don’t actually cool the room but they move air and make you feel cooler. Just be sure to turn them off when you leave the room. The fan is not helping anyone if there is no one there to feel it. Additionally, if you have a basement or lower level where the air is generally cooler a well placed, powerful fan can blow that cooler air up to a warmer level.

- Get some shades on those windows! During the day having shades down helps to keep the sun from heating the inside of your house. Around here (and the midwest in general) this is especially important for South facing windows as they get the most sun exposure.

- Keep the lights off as much as possible! This is especially important for incandescent bulbs you may still have in your house. Those little guys produce more heat than you might think!

- Drink cool drinks! While it doesn’t actually cool your home it does cool you, which is arguably more important.

Come back when its colder for cheap and easy heating tips!

So after my last installment of Ask-A-Brekke I got a lot of questions. I will do my best to answer them all. I promise.

But today I am tackling one a received from a friend through text “Do a post about indoor composting and why I should bother.”

Now those of you who have been reading for a while know that I have been doing my own in apartment composting with worms (vermiculture). As far as I’ve been able to tell, this is the best way to do small space/indoor composting. First off, vermiculture, when done correctly, is virtually odorless.  Bins may give off the scent of wet earth when opened but that’s it. Second, the final compost from a vermiculture bin is a great fertilizer for any indoor (or outdoor) plants that you may have around. And lastly, worms are great, super low maintenance pets

But that still leaves the main question. Why should I bother composting at all?

The truth is that much of the food waste that you and I create every day can be composted, especially fruit and vegetable matter. If you are not composting it or eating it the waste goes into the garbage can and eventually ends up in a landfill. What happens to that food in the landfill you ask? Well not much. Food that is put into a landfill and compacted decays very slowly.

I don’t have exact numbers, they probably depend on many factors, but I can say that depending on the waste I add to my worm bin it can be gone within two weeks. Stuff that is harder to break down may take a couple months.  And when it is all broken down into tasty compost it has a purpose. It can help create new plant material. I’m pretty sure in a landfill your food waste just becomes wasted energy.

Does that give you enough why bother info?

So last night a received a text from a friend asking which was a better choice for heating your home, wood or coal. So I figured now was a perfect time to return to my blog and post an Ask-A-Brekke So, without further ado, which is better to heat my home, wood or coal.

The Short Answer: Wood!

The Long Answer: Wood is a better choice for heating your home for several reasons. First, wood is considered to be a sustainable resource. If you cut down a 20 year old tree and you plant a brand new tree the same day, in 20 years you’ll have a new tree to enjoy or burn or whatever as you wish. Also, wood only releases the carbon that it has accumulated over its lifetime.

All of this being said. There are still several problems to burning wood. Cutting down trees has impacts on the ecosystems that those trees exist in. Even “waste timber,” which is usually branches and other cast-offs from from the timber industry, have ecological merit. When you remove mature trees and replace them with juvenile’s there is a loss of food and habitat. Additionally waste wood is typically broken down by fungi and insects in a forest habitat, eventually becoming healthy, nutrient rich soil. Removing “waste” wood can upset that cycle.

Also, burning wood in a fireplace or wood stove is a fairly inefficient way of heating a home. A large portion of the the heat escapes up a chimney or stove vent.

So, obviously, if your only choice for heating your home is coal or wood, opt for wood. But looking into passive heating as well as solar or wind energy to help heat is always going to be a better choice.

Thanks for asking, and remember, you can leave a comment or an e-mail with any other questions you would like me to help answer

So I am currently in Sweden visiting my brother John. He is studying in southern Sweden for this semester of school.

So far I’ve been enjoying myself, we walked around in Copenhagen (not in Sweden, but close to where my brother lives in Sweden) yesterday. Today we are on a train to Stockholm, where we will spend a few days investigating the city and having a marvelous time before we head back south to Lund, where my brother is living.

I only write about this because, while I’ve been to Europe before, it is easy to forget the lifestyle differences. In Sweden (and Denmark) there are huge bike parking lots in many public spaces as well as entirely separate road space for bikers.  In Copenhagen we walked down the middle of many side streets with plenty of other people with not a car in sight. All of the toilets I’ve seen so far have been equipped with a small flush and large flush function. You have to pay extra to get a bag when shopping. And last but not least, currently I am enjoying the free wi-fi that came with my first class train ticket on some really quality high speed rail (4 hours from Lund to Stockholm, crazy!).

Let’s contrast that with my home in Chicago. While you do not need to own a car to live comfortably in Chicago, many people still do.  Cars line all of the sidestreets near my home. For me to bike to my job (just under 2 miles away from my house) I have to bike on roads where there is no bike distinction at all and in “shared” lanes, that simply amount to a bike picture being painted on the ground. Most of the time walking in any street is a terrible idea. I have only seen toilets with two flush options three times in my life, and only once in Chicago (at the Shedd Aquarium). Most stores provide bags at no charge and while some do encourage the use of renewable bags by awarding small refunds, they are few and far between. And lastly, there is no high-speed rail. At all.

Now I love living in Chicago, and feel that there are definitely strides being made in the direction of  greener city planning choices, but is is kind of nice to see a place where walking or biking to get around is much more the norm. I mean at the grocery store yesterday there were probably 40-50 bikes parked out front, many with baskets for getting groceries home. That is really cool right?

Basically, what I am saying is I forgot how refreshing it can be to see these things happening all around you, and am excited at the prospect of us moving closer and closer to an American version of a greener by design society.

originally posted on examiner.com

Living in the Great Lakes region it’s easy to take water for granted.

Most of us don’t think about the fact that not only do we have abundant water, but we also have abundant CLEAN water. Unfortunately, clean water is not something that all people have access too. Worldwide 2.5 billion people lack access to proper sanitation including drinking water and toilets.

And this is why in 1993, World Water Day was created by the United Nations to bring more awareness to water issues around the world. Every March 22nd the UN and not-for-profits around the world seek to educate on specific themes relevant to fresh water resources around the world. This year’s theme is “water quality = well being.”

Clean water for every in this world is something that we should all strive to attain. Think about how much of a role water plays in your life. The average American directly or indirectly uses 100 gallons of water each day for cooking or washing or drinking or any number of other things. Imagine what it would be like to not have access to abundant, clean water. For most of us who live here in Chicago, it is almost impossible to imagine. We take our water for granted.

If you are so inclined, use World Water Day as an opportunity to learn more about water issues, not just in our region, but around the world.
For more information about World Water Day please visit the UN World Water Day website.

Safer Pest Control Project is co-sponsoring a showing of a Chemical Reaction on March 20th at Columbia College.

This is a great movie that follows a community in Canada that eliminated chemical pesticides, and how that effected their lives. It also explores how their experience effected lawn care in North America.

Check out the facebook event for more information!

originally posted on www.examiner.com

So the US Department of Energy ranks that Great Lakes region as a great place to build wind turbines. The region is especially well suited to handle offshore wind installations. The wind near and on the lakes is comparable to the wind on the great plains.

This would seem like a great thing! In an area that is currently struggling economically there is a great source of jobs just waiting to be tapped. Education programs surrounding wind power have been popping up all over the country, and with a few wind installations projects in the Great Lakes there could be a fantastic market for people with the right skill sets.

The downside is that there is a still a lot of opposition to wind power, especially from residents of the region who are nervous about the aesthetics of wind farms and the noise pollution associated with turning turbines. There are additional concerns about the safety of wind turbines for area wildlife that have plagued the viability of wind facilities for years.

At a conference last fall I sat in on a very interesting talk about the effects that wind turbines had on terrestrial life where they were built. The problem with the data is that there is simply not enough of it. And it is difficult to tell if the potential benefits of wind turbines will be able to outweigh the potential problems that might be caused to wildlife.

The fight for and against wind power in the Great Lakes is being played out in slightly different was in places all over the United States and throughout the world. Alternative energy needs to be a part of our future, and wind energy is a part of that alternative energy future. But obviously, there are still a lot of concerns that need to be addressed, in Chicago and the rest of the Great Lakes and the world.

Over to the No Impact Man blog and read the short essay on progress. Also, add this blog to your feed reader or your e-mail alerts, because there is always something worth reading there.

Additionally, I don’t think I mentioned this before. But last year the No Impact Man Movie was released. It was pretty interesting, especially for those who are curious about what a life with less impact might look like. There is also a No Impact Man book!

Indonesian street kids find rescue in organic farming from Voice of America.

Now this story is inspiring to me in many ways. Of course the fact that it is giving kids with little hope for the future skills that they can use to make their own success is fantastic, but I am also really drawn to the organic farming/returning to our roots aspect of the Learning Farm.

In the past few weeks I have read a couple of different stories about how farming and rehabilitation/job training programs can go hand in hand. There is something about being outside and connecting with nature as well as producing a tangible product that seems to be a very effective  way to connect with so many people from so many walks of life.

originally posted on examiner.com

So there has been a lot of noise about Asian carp in the news over the last couple of months, and I am certainly no exception.

But today I started thinking about how the Asian carp issue really sheds light on the entire problem of invasive species. The O’Brien lock in the Sanitary and Ship Canal is not the only weak link in the Great Lakes system. There are thousands of inlets to the lakes, and several man-made connections to the lakes besides the canals in Illinois. In fact, the biggest source of aquatic invaders in the Great Lakes is the St. Lawrence Seaway.

When we focus so closely on one invasive animal it is easy to lose the bigger picture. If we stop the Asian carp, but allow in other, just as ecosystem disrupting, aquatic invaders, we have not won any battles. Here in Illinois we face so many problems from plants and animals that are just as damaging to our native ecosystems.

One of the ones that comes to mind is the Eurasian water-milfoil. This plant closes harbors in large and small lakes alike across Illinois and other Great lakes states. Families with lakefront property on a lake that has been infested with the milfoil have had hundreds of dollars added to their homeowner fees to pay for abatement measures so that they can enjoy the water they already pay a premium to live on.

Yes, the Asian carp is a real problem. Yes, we need to take the appropriate measures to prevent them from spreading into other waterways and the Great lakes. But, we cannot lose sight of the bigger picture. The battle against invasive species is not a one animal problem, and we need to treat is as such.