A Deeper Green

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?

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!

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!

Many times when people are faced with buying organic produce they may ask if it’s worth spending the extra money that organic products command. Now the Environmental Working Group (EWG) has made that decision easier for all of us.

They have put together a great printable cheat sheet. You can download the PDF of it here.

The great part about this cheat sheet is that it lists the 12 foods that you should typically look for the organic version of, and also gives you several foods that carry lower pesticide loads and can be bought conventionally. I really like this guide because it takes the guess work out of buying produce.

Take a minute and download it, print it out, and take it to the store with you next time. Your body will thank you

So, we’ve all made it to 2010. Yay!

I spent the last couple weeks running around like a crazy person, visiting with all of my family and all of my boyfriend’s family.  I love the holidays, but they can be pretty stressful.

In similar news, project “Make Christmas” was a resounding success. Everyone seemed to like their baked goods and I’ve only heard good things about my mix CDs. The one think I will probably change for next year is to spread out the baking. I fit all of my baking into one 24 hour period, and it was pretty crazy.  I think making Christmas is an idea that will work well for every year from now on though

Now with that recap of the year in place I would like to get to the meat of this post. I recently became aware of this great blog, Green Mama’s Pad. Some of the most recent posts are looking back on green goals for 2009 and creating new goals for 2010. As the whole point of this blog is to illustrate my journey to a greener lifestyle, I thought that maybe setting some green goals for 2010 here in this blog might be a good idea. I also encourage you, my readers, to make a green goal or two for yourself this year or to put a link in the comments about green goals you’ve made and worked for in the past.

So without further ado, my green goals for 2010:

~ Shop the farmer’s market, co-op and organic delivery first. I’ve been doing pretty well with this lately, but want to make more of an effort.

~ In line with that, try to phase out some of the prepackaged frozen foods that me and my boyfriend rely on so much for lunches and quick meals. We love those Amy’s frozen burritos; why not make more of our own!

~ Do better at food preservation. Freezing was fine for last year, but this year I am canning, no excuses.

~ To expand my small and successful container gardening operation to include actual vegetables, not just herbs and flowers. (I’m thinking peppers and tomatoes!)

~ And lastly, to do a better job documenting my efforts here. Last year was my best year yet with this blog and I want to keep pushing upward!

Share your green goals with me in the comments! I’d love to know what others are interested in and maybe even try to help

So as it is December I know many of us are starting to get into crazy gifting mode. I previously did a green gifting post, but decided that I wanted to do something a little different this year. I won’t be buying much in the way of gifts as I really don’t have the income to afford gifts for all my many many family members.

But I will still be giving presents and I thought I would share some of my thought processes with you, my lovedly readers. These thought processes are not to give you a “guide” to anything, but are an effort to encourage you to think outside the box when it comes to green holiday-ing and gift-giving.

Since the holidays can always be a little overwhelming for me on the money front, and I really can’t foresee not giving gifts to the special people in my life (especially when they are always going to give me nice gifts) I spent a lot of time this fall thinking of alternatives.

In my gift giving in general I have tried to move away from stuff based gifts to a more experience based gift giving philosophy. It’s worked pretty well, and honestly its made gift giving easier for those few people in my life who seem to already have everything. But the problem with experiences as gifts is that they tend to add up in price. Which is something I can’t really handle financially this year.

So, after spending a lot of time thinking about my best solution, I decided that I should move to a more “create-a-gift” approach for this year. Lately, I’ve been flexing my baking skills (made a pumpkin and apple pie from scratch for thanksgiving this year with stuff from the farmers market!). And I always like a good excuse to be crafty. So with those powers combined I think I’ve managed to come up with some really good gift ideas.

I will be baking mini breads and cookies. I’ve also concieved of an idea to make scented and colored bath salts (Epsom salts and essential oils, combined!). I will be making mix CDs and using old wrapping paper and cards to decorate. I’m using my creativity to put together the best gifts for everyone that I possibly can.

Will I still buy a few things? Yes, of course. I plan on buying baskets and probably a few crafty materials. The farmer’s market also has some great local honey and bee wax items that will flesh out my gifts nicely. But despite these purchases, I am feeling really good about the thoughtfulness, environmentally friendliness  and tastiness of my holiday gifts.

What kind of gifts might you be able to give that reflect your personalities and views while still being exciting to your… um… giftees (?)? What changes can you make in your holiday routine that will help you to be a greener and happier person this holiday season?

I know that if I came up with some ideas you can too. So think about it, and feel free to share your ideas here.

Also, in the green community there was a nifty push last week to celebrate Buy Nothing Day as a counterpoint to “Black Friday”. This fits nicely in with this post, so I gathered together a couple posts I saw about “Buy nothing day” for you to read at your leisure:

Boycott Black Friday and celebrate Buy Nothing Day, via Twilight Earth

Thanksgiving, Buy Nothing Day & my travel mug, via fakeplasticfish

Have a great day

I just found out today that my local farmers market (the Logan Square Farmer’s Market) will be going on all winter long!

For those of you who remember my post about preserving local harvests, you know that I was a little bummed about the end of farmer’s market season, but now with this great news I can’t wait for next Sunday.

It is actually really interesting, because the market will actually be meeting in a theater that is much closer to my apartment that the outdoor market, making it even easier for me to go and share in the local bounty.

Hopefully the next time I go I will be able to take and share some great pictures with you guys!

Until then, have a great day.

So I’m fairly certain I’ve made my position on eating meat fairly clear. Environmentally, meat is bad news. There are also all sorts of other reasons that people talk about being vegetarian or for that matter vegan.

Today I had my attention drawn to this article by Jonathan Safran Foer published in the New York Times. Here he looks at vegetarianism in a very interesting and accessible way.

I recommend that you read it an digest it. It’s not a perfect article in any way. It only hints at the food politics behind much of the factory farming that goes on in this country, and mentions nothing about the ills of other animal products (like milk, eggs and cheese). Still, its worth a read, and as always, its worth taking stock of your own eating habits. Can you make a difference at the dinner table tonight?

So I have mentioned this topic in the past on a couple of occasions and today Beth Terry over at Fake Plastic Fish has up a good post about the movie Tapped and what she learned from it as well as some great info on bottled water and steps that you can take to make a difference.

Please read her article and pass it along.

I am hoping to see tapped myself in the nearish future, and hope that you will consider looking for it at a theater near you. For info check out the Tapped website.

Since moving into my new apartment I have been trying to make changes in the cleaning routine. Trying to move them into less toxic territory, and I’m hoping to cut down waste in the process.

Of course the biggest asset to anyone looking to green their cleaning is white vinegar. It has what seems to be thousands of uses, and the old tenants left some behind so I haven’t had to buy any yet!

So far we have used it for pest control as well as all bathroom and some kitchen cleaning needs. I pair it with baking soda to scrub the toilet, bath tub and sinks.

I have read lots about cleaning windows with vinegar as well, but haven’t been able to try it. I know a lot of people have had problems with using just vinegar on their windows with it leaving all sorts of streaks, but my understanding is the best way to  prevent the streaks is to make a mixture of 8 parts water to 1 part vinegar and a teeny tiny bit of liquid soap.

The liquid soap we’ve had the most luck with in my house is Dr. Bronners, which is available at the nearby Target. It’s a pure castille soap with no added surfactants and it comes in a 100% post consumer plastic bottle. We’ve been using the bottle we have for close to a year now. A little goes a long way.

I am just at the beginning of my green cleaning odyssey, so you can expect further updates as I continue on. For those of you moving faster than me on the green cleaning track I’ve had great luck using the book Green Housekeeping by Ellen Sandbeck. I will probably be doing a full review of the book soon. But for those of you that can’t wait it is worth checking out for sure.