George, our mailman came to my door the other day, all smiles, and said “I’ve got worms!”, to which I replied that there were several good doctors that could help him. “No, no,” he said. “I’ve got a worm composter!”
I had been showing off the garden and my compost piles to George a few weeks ago, and he excited with the idea of recycling his kitchen waste but lives in an apartment. Worm composters are the perfect solution.
Taking up little space, simple to start and maintain, a worm composter provides a happy place for your worms, who in turn will process 5 to 10 pounds of fruit and vegetable peels, pulverized egg shells, tea bags and coffee grounds every week, leaving behind worm casings, compost “tea”, and no odor.
Getting started is easy. There are several worm composting kits available that come with everything you need to create a worm ranch. A model called the Cascade Worm Factory comes complete with the bins, a manual and 10,000 worms. For the more adventurous, there is Worms Eat My Garbage by Mary Appelhof, an excellent guide available in your library that will take you through constructing a worm composter out of wood, and scavenging through horse dung piles for your own red wigglers, and setting up the correct environment. Most municipal recycling programs also offer courses and resources in worm composting. Check yours today, and happy ranching!
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Mulching Away
It isn’t often that I get to use the bon mot “au contraire”, but last week presented the perfect opportunity when my nosy neighbor Fred leaned over the fence and said “getting a little lazy there, leaving all of them grass clippings on the lawn.”
I stopped pushing my manual reel mower, turned, raised an eyebrow and said “au contraire, Fred” and proceeded to explain the wonders of mulch.
There are two basic techniques for mulching. The kind I was practising on my lawn is known as lazy or accidental mulching. The grass is cut, falls onto the ground and in a couple of days has begun to break down and replenish the soil. It also keeps the ground cooler by inhibiting evaporation, leaving my grass greener with less water.
The second type of mulching is directed mulching; taking straw, leaves, bark, or wood chips and spreading them around the bases of plants or on the paths of the garden specifically to deter the growth of weeds, and to provide nutrients to the plants. This takes a little more work that just leaving your clippings on the lawn, but it is a sound way of controlling weeds, and giving your plants a boost.
Mulching is also a good garden and lawn fall activity. Shredded leaves make for excellent fall and winter plant food.
By far the biggest benefit of mulching is keeping leaves and grass clippings out of the landfill. On average 10%- 20% of landfill wastes are grass clippings. So Fred, I’m not “lazy”, I’m performing a public service for the greater good. So there.
I stopped pushing my manual reel mower, turned, raised an eyebrow and said “au contraire, Fred” and proceeded to explain the wonders of mulch.
There are two basic techniques for mulching. The kind I was practising on my lawn is known as lazy or accidental mulching. The grass is cut, falls onto the ground and in a couple of days has begun to break down and replenish the soil. It also keeps the ground cooler by inhibiting evaporation, leaving my grass greener with less water.
The second type of mulching is directed mulching; taking straw, leaves, bark, or wood chips and spreading them around the bases of plants or on the paths of the garden specifically to deter the growth of weeds, and to provide nutrients to the plants. This takes a little more work that just leaving your clippings on the lawn, but it is a sound way of controlling weeds, and giving your plants a boost.
Mulching is also a good garden and lawn fall activity. Shredded leaves make for excellent fall and winter plant food.
By far the biggest benefit of mulching is keeping leaves and grass clippings out of the landfill. On average 10%- 20% of landfill wastes are grass clippings. So Fred, I’m not “lazy”, I’m performing a public service for the greater good. So there.
Saturday, May 5, 2007
The 110 Mile Diet - Book Review
100 Mile Diet – A Year of Local Eating
No, you don’t need to walk a 100 miles to lose weight, and if fact this book is not about shedding the personal pounds at all. It is about leaving a lighter environmental footprint on our fragile planet.
The book is a chronicle, told in alternating chapters by the two authors Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon, of their year of eating nothing that they could not source within a 100 mile radius of the downtown Vancouver apartment. The impetus for the experiment was the growing realization that our food travels a very long way to get to us. Consider the Caesar Salad. Lettuce from California, olive oil and parmesan from Italy, anchovies from Spain, Worcestershire sauce from England. A trip of thousands of kilometers, all thanks to our ultimately doomed oil-based global transportation system.
It is a tale of a personal relationship struggling under the stress of no chocolate, no pepper, no olive oil, no ginger. The sorrow of weeks of beets and potatoes. The joy of sourcing wheat and thus pancakes, for the first time in 9 months. It is a tale of two people reconnecting with the local food farmers, farmers markets, and learning to taste, to really taste and appreciate their food for the first time.
What started as a personal experiment has grown into a movement. Check out www.100milediet.org for the full story, to find how you can benefit from eating locally, to see personal stories from other local eaters, and to find an ever growing list of local producers across Canada and the United States.
No, you don’t need to walk a 100 miles to lose weight, and if fact this book is not about shedding the personal pounds at all. It is about leaving a lighter environmental footprint on our fragile planet.
The book is a chronicle, told in alternating chapters by the two authors Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon, of their year of eating nothing that they could not source within a 100 mile radius of the downtown Vancouver apartment. The impetus for the experiment was the growing realization that our food travels a very long way to get to us. Consider the Caesar Salad. Lettuce from California, olive oil and parmesan from Italy, anchovies from Spain, Worcestershire sauce from England. A trip of thousands of kilometers, all thanks to our ultimately doomed oil-based global transportation system.
It is a tale of a personal relationship struggling under the stress of no chocolate, no pepper, no olive oil, no ginger. The sorrow of weeks of beets and potatoes. The joy of sourcing wheat and thus pancakes, for the first time in 9 months. It is a tale of two people reconnecting with the local food farmers, farmers markets, and learning to taste, to really taste and appreciate their food for the first time.
What started as a personal experiment has grown into a movement. Check out www.100milediet.org for the full story, to find how you can benefit from eating locally, to see personal stories from other local eaters, and to find an ever growing list of local producers across Canada and the United States.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
The Road to Hell is Paved with HOV Lanes.
Carpool lanes, also known as HOV lanes or diamond lanes are designed as a relatively low cost solution to traffic congestion. The underlying logic is simple. If every car contained two people then we would have half as many cars on the road, and traffic congestion, the main cause of the ironically named “Rush” hour, would disappear. And while the logic is simple, the reality is less clear.
For example, in Vancouver a special HOV lane was built on one of the busiest in the city. While the number of cars with more than one rider in the morning commute increased from 600 to nearly 1,000, the number of single-occupant vehicles increased 46% to 5,200. That wasn’t foreseen. Neither was the 8% decline in bus ridership. It seems that as people began to ride-share and moved into carpool lanes, it freed up capacity in the regular lanes, encouraged more people to take the route, and because the bus riders saw only a 3 minute saving with the new lane, many of them abandoned the bus in favor of their cars.
So the HOV Lane caused less bus ridership, and in the end, more traffic. Somewhere there is a city planner banging his head on the desk.
For example, in Vancouver a special HOV lane was built on one of the busiest in the city. While the number of cars with more than one rider in the morning commute increased from 600 to nearly 1,000, the number of single-occupant vehicles increased 46% to 5,200. That wasn’t foreseen. Neither was the 8% decline in bus ridership. It seems that as people began to ride-share and moved into carpool lanes, it freed up capacity in the regular lanes, encouraged more people to take the route, and because the bus riders saw only a 3 minute saving with the new lane, many of them abandoned the bus in favor of their cars.
So the HOV Lane caused less bus ridership, and in the end, more traffic. Somewhere there is a city planner banging his head on the desk.
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Better Labels, Better World
The idea of consumer education, awareness and responsibility is one that is gaining some traction in activism circles. The idea is that if consumers are aware of the total sum of their actions they will change their actions and behave in a more responsible, sustainable and “green” way.
There are many organizations that strive in through education to change the way consumers behave; PETA (www.peta.org), Greenpeace (www.greenpeace.org), World Wildlife Fund (www.wwf.org), and Natural Resources Defense Council (www.nrdc.org). All four have different ways of trying to change consumers behavior, but my personal favorite are the various Fair Trade Initiatives (www.fairtrade.net) around the world that specifically try to influence consumer behavior through positive labeling schemes.
Maggie and I were talking about this they other day as we stood in Costco and debating which coffee to buy. They carry several brands. Two were organic, and one was fair trade organic. We bought one organic and one fair trade organic, just to try them both out.
Once home, we brewed up a cup, and my mind started doing the jitterbug. “Maggie” I said, “I’ve just had an astonishing idea!” She stood there slack jawed as my ideas raced like a Ferrari across the blacktop of her consciousness. When I was done she took my rest of my coffee and threw it down the sink and walked away. I’m not sure what she meant by that. Oh well.
Producer responsibility should be part of the labeling act for every product, to allow consumers to be able to make better choices. Imagine if you had truth in labeling? “This product made by child slaves in Bangladesh.” or “50,000 gallons of drinking water was polluted in the manufacture of this product.” How would the jewelry industry react if they had to put the warning “20 tons of cyanide-laced tailings were left in a watershed in a third world country to bring you this product.” on that engagement ring you were thinking about.
Drastic? Yes. But the labels on the coffee in Costco allowed us to make a choice. We knew that the brands that weren’t organically certified, or fair-trade certified were products that were produced with pesticides and predatory price structures by large multi national companies ill concerned with the growers or the environment. Nutritional labeling and organic certification have gone a long way to making sure companies produce food that is healthy for both the grower and the consumer.
Perhaps it’s time to move away from the obscure to the exact in an effort to let the consumer, who is after all responsible for 100% of the pollution in the world, be able to make the best choices.
There are many organizations that strive in through education to change the way consumers behave; PETA (www.peta.org), Greenpeace (www.greenpeace.org), World Wildlife Fund (www.wwf.org), and Natural Resources Defense Council (www.nrdc.org). All four have different ways of trying to change consumers behavior, but my personal favorite are the various Fair Trade Initiatives (www.fairtrade.net) around the world that specifically try to influence consumer behavior through positive labeling schemes.
Maggie and I were talking about this they other day as we stood in Costco and debating which coffee to buy. They carry several brands. Two were organic, and one was fair trade organic. We bought one organic and one fair trade organic, just to try them both out.
Once home, we brewed up a cup, and my mind started doing the jitterbug. “Maggie” I said, “I’ve just had an astonishing idea!” She stood there slack jawed as my ideas raced like a Ferrari across the blacktop of her consciousness. When I was done she took my rest of my coffee and threw it down the sink and walked away. I’m not sure what she meant by that. Oh well.
Producer responsibility should be part of the labeling act for every product, to allow consumers to be able to make better choices. Imagine if you had truth in labeling? “This product made by child slaves in Bangladesh.” or “50,000 gallons of drinking water was polluted in the manufacture of this product.” How would the jewelry industry react if they had to put the warning “20 tons of cyanide-laced tailings were left in a watershed in a third world country to bring you this product.” on that engagement ring you were thinking about.
Drastic? Yes. But the labels on the coffee in Costco allowed us to make a choice. We knew that the brands that weren’t organically certified, or fair-trade certified were products that were produced with pesticides and predatory price structures by large multi national companies ill concerned with the growers or the environment. Nutritional labeling and organic certification have gone a long way to making sure companies produce food that is healthy for both the grower and the consumer.
Perhaps it’s time to move away from the obscure to the exact in an effort to let the consumer, who is after all responsible for 100% of the pollution in the world, be able to make the best choices.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
My Salad Just Flew in From Italy, and Boy, are its Wings Tired!
I’ve been married for just three years this July, and so there are things about my wife that I am just learning. For example, I didn’t know until recently that my wife likes hands-free cellular phones. Not that we’ll ever own one, mind you, its just that she has a new way to explain my sometime irascible behavior to innocent bystanders.
For example; a couple of years ago we were standing in the local vegetable store, and Maggie was in line with our produce and I was wandering about looking for treats I could sneak into the buggy before she got up to the till. My wife makes an awesome Caesar salad, so I picked up some mesh bagged garlic. I don’t know if I’d just missed the labeling on the product before, or if it was new labeling, but it said “Product of China”.
Well. I lost it. There I was. I’m standing in the aisle and I’m talking out loud, nope make that raving, flinging my arms in the air, saying “Jumpin Jehosiphats! China? How the heck can this stuff be fresh if it’s coming 10,321 kilometers in some stinking container ship? Why the @#$% can’t we grow this stuff in Canada?”
Maggie shakes her head, and leans over to the women beside her and says “ I think he has one of those new hands-free cell phones. ”
Sometimes it’s best just to humor me. But anyways it got me thinking. We take our food supplies for granted, and we don’t really think about where it all comes from. Take our Caesar Salad for example.
Lettuce from California – 1720 kms. Parmigiano and olive oil from Italy – 9200 kms. Add up the anchovy paste, garlic and other ingredients, and it clocks in at over 37,000 kms!!
It’s easy to dismiss it all with a wave of the hand and “we live in a global economy” hubris. The problem is that all of that food that comes from somewhere else requires oil to get here. The farther the food source, the more oil. And cost. The price of oil is now a greater determinant of food pricing that the actual growing. To put it none too subtly, as the cost at the pump goes up, you can expect your food bill to follow. Research shows that it takes 4 calories of oil energy to get 1 calorie of fresh food to the farm gate. The numbers go up for as the distance grows, and the complexity of the processing increases. Canned and frozen foods are worse, and processed cereals require five times the inherent food energy just to process, let alone grow, package, ship, and store.
I didn’t know all this before I threw the garlic back into the bin and stomped out of the store leaving my wife shaking her head and claiming not to know me. What I did know is that it doesn’t take rocket science to grow garlic.
I headed home, dug up some wilting petunias, and planted some garlic. The first harvest was meager, but it was a start. Being pig headed and logical I’d planted in the spring, which was wrong, as I learned from Ken Stefanson of Gabriola Gourmet Garlic – the Garlic Man that visits the Ladner Village Market each summer. He set me straight. “Nope,” he said, “you’ve got to plant it under the full moon in October. Naked. ”
It’s a good thing I’ve got a tall hedge around my backyard.
And that’s how it started. Each year our garlic harvest gets larger, to the point after an initial purchase of 3 heads, we now grow enough garlic to get us through the year. The garlic heads are as big as my fist, and the taste is amazing. You don’t need much room. It grows all winter. It does wonders for your other flowers, as it acts as a natural deterrent to detrimental insects.
If you miss Ken, you can also order it from Mary Ballon at West Coast Seeds, the best little organic seed farm in BC, right here in Ladner.
Nothing is better than local food. Nothing is more local than your backyard. Happy planting.
For example; a couple of years ago we were standing in the local vegetable store, and Maggie was in line with our produce and I was wandering about looking for treats I could sneak into the buggy before she got up to the till. My wife makes an awesome Caesar salad, so I picked up some mesh bagged garlic. I don’t know if I’d just missed the labeling on the product before, or if it was new labeling, but it said “Product of China”.
Well. I lost it. There I was. I’m standing in the aisle and I’m talking out loud, nope make that raving, flinging my arms in the air, saying “Jumpin Jehosiphats! China? How the heck can this stuff be fresh if it’s coming 10,321 kilometers in some stinking container ship? Why the @#$% can’t we grow this stuff in Canada?”
Maggie shakes her head, and leans over to the women beside her and says “ I think he has one of those new hands-free cell phones. ”
Sometimes it’s best just to humor me. But anyways it got me thinking. We take our food supplies for granted, and we don’t really think about where it all comes from. Take our Caesar Salad for example.
Lettuce from California – 1720 kms. Parmigiano and olive oil from Italy – 9200 kms. Add up the anchovy paste, garlic and other ingredients, and it clocks in at over 37,000 kms!!
It’s easy to dismiss it all with a wave of the hand and “we live in a global economy” hubris. The problem is that all of that food that comes from somewhere else requires oil to get here. The farther the food source, the more oil. And cost. The price of oil is now a greater determinant of food pricing that the actual growing. To put it none too subtly, as the cost at the pump goes up, you can expect your food bill to follow. Research shows that it takes 4 calories of oil energy to get 1 calorie of fresh food to the farm gate. The numbers go up for as the distance grows, and the complexity of the processing increases. Canned and frozen foods are worse, and processed cereals require five times the inherent food energy just to process, let alone grow, package, ship, and store.
I didn’t know all this before I threw the garlic back into the bin and stomped out of the store leaving my wife shaking her head and claiming not to know me. What I did know is that it doesn’t take rocket science to grow garlic.
I headed home, dug up some wilting petunias, and planted some garlic. The first harvest was meager, but it was a start. Being pig headed and logical I’d planted in the spring, which was wrong, as I learned from Ken Stefanson of Gabriola Gourmet Garlic – the Garlic Man that visits the Ladner Village Market each summer. He set me straight. “Nope,” he said, “you’ve got to plant it under the full moon in October. Naked. ”
It’s a good thing I’ve got a tall hedge around my backyard.
And that’s how it started. Each year our garlic harvest gets larger, to the point after an initial purchase of 3 heads, we now grow enough garlic to get us through the year. The garlic heads are as big as my fist, and the taste is amazing. You don’t need much room. It grows all winter. It does wonders for your other flowers, as it acts as a natural deterrent to detrimental insects.
If you miss Ken, you can also order it from Mary Ballon at West Coast Seeds, the best little organic seed farm in BC, right here in Ladner.
Nothing is better than local food. Nothing is more local than your backyard. Happy planting.
Monday, February 12, 2007
One Man's Garbage
After a lot of discussion about the pros and cons of being able to see the floor in the garage for the first time in a decade, Maggie agreed to idea of building a shed to house our bikes and gardening tools. After consulting the feng shui garden designer, we established a site and the shed began.
But this is was not to be an ordinary shed. It was to be created almost entirely of garbage.
It all started with three of my neighbors deciding that it was time to add-on to their houses. In the space of three weeks, three dumpsters were parked in three driveways, and deconstruction began.
Dumpsters were an anathema to my father. He could not, for the life of him, understand why people were throwing away perfectly good items. Items he gladly scrounged and brought home with all the excitement of a boy rescuing a puppy from the pound. “Look at this”, he’d say, a knowing smile on his face. It was always something in relatively good shape; sometimes just needing a coat of paint or a few extra screws, but nothing that we ever exactly needed. At least not at that exact moment. Or ever, as my mother was quick and repeatedly to point out. There were, at any given time, things as varied as a 15’ catamaran sailing boat (my Dad did not sail), a double pedestal oak desk (already had two), perfectly good lumber (for what?), and various lamps (just needs a new plug and a shade), pieces of plate glass, (I don’t know, maybe coasters?).
It’s easy to establish the origins of my father’s packrat nature. My father lived on a farm in Saskatchewan during the Dirty Thirties. In those days, things were not thrown out, they were simply set aside until another use for them could be found. People had so few things, and the sense of community was so strong, that things were repurposed, repaired or shared, rather than dumped. Add that history to a tartan genetic code, and the results are predictable.
So, I guess it’s not surprising that the shed sprang up the way it did.
Across the street, the sounds of prybars and chainsaws began, and so did I. With the approval of my neighbor, and her builder and the demolition crew, I began to scrounge. The roof came off to expose 16 thirteen foot 2x6s. They became studs for the walls. The 2x10 fascia boards were discarded and became the floor joists. Triangle shaped plywood cutoffs from the new roof were born again in a crazy geometry lesson of a floor. A leftover 4 foot section of clear 4x4 yellow cedar was cut and hand split to become a design detail under the gable.
As my two sons and a conscripted neighbor boy worked away, I would enumerate the savings. “Look at this! This piece of 2x6 would cost $8 in the store”, I’d say, grinning away, and the 14 year olds would roll their eyes as loudly as they could.
The two best scrounges of the project came at the end of the construction. I had sided the front of the shed with some reclaimed cedar siding from a fence I had torn down to put up the shed, and I was short cedar for the long side. Resigned to having to go to the cedar mills on River Road, I loaded up the trailer with the few non-usable odds and ends from the job, and headed for the dump, intending to pick up the cedar in the same load.
Imagine my surprise as I was dumping my odd and ends into the bin at the dump when a fellow pulls up with his trailer and is dumping perfect 1x10 pieces of cedar siding from a garage he was tearing down. After some intricate negotiations with the crew at the dump, I filled up my trailer from his, and headed home, loaded down with more cedar than I needed for the job, saving about $200 and part of a tree, and diverting a little waste from the landfill.
A small bit of waste to be sure. Each year the GVRD accepts 1.2 million tons of garbage, but 64% is construction waste. An additional 400,000 tons of demolition and construction waste is sent to private landfills. The only bright in this dark picture is the 70 % that is actually recycled. In fact, the GVRD is one of the leaders in construction waste recycling, with streams for concrete, asphalt, wood, and green waste. Good for us, bad for the rest of North America.
The finishing touch for the job was the shelving for the inside, and for those I turned to Delta Freecycle. I posted a request for storage units and within a day, two offers for shelving appeared in my mailbox. Freecycling is a movement that began in May 2003 to promote waste reduction in Tucson's downtown and help save desert landscape from being taken over by landfills. In two short years the concept has blossomed with 3,203 groups around the world and 1,793,318 members. In Delta the Freecycle community started in June 2004, and now has over 750 members. To find cool stuff, and to get rid of your usable but not required items, go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Delta_Freecycle/. Another excellent resource is http://www.vancouver.reuses.com/
The end of this story. My four year old and I were biking this week along Central Avenue, where they are tearing down a couple of old houses to make way for four new ones. As we sat and watched the demolitions machines obliterate the old houses, we could catch glimpses of perfectly salvageble lumber before it splintered in the maw of the machine. My son thought a minute, and then said. “You know Dad, there’s some good 2x4s there.” The torch has been passed.
But this is was not to be an ordinary shed. It was to be created almost entirely of garbage.
It all started with three of my neighbors deciding that it was time to add-on to their houses. In the space of three weeks, three dumpsters were parked in three driveways, and deconstruction began.
Dumpsters were an anathema to my father. He could not, for the life of him, understand why people were throwing away perfectly good items. Items he gladly scrounged and brought home with all the excitement of a boy rescuing a puppy from the pound. “Look at this”, he’d say, a knowing smile on his face. It was always something in relatively good shape; sometimes just needing a coat of paint or a few extra screws, but nothing that we ever exactly needed. At least not at that exact moment. Or ever, as my mother was quick and repeatedly to point out. There were, at any given time, things as varied as a 15’ catamaran sailing boat (my Dad did not sail), a double pedestal oak desk (already had two), perfectly good lumber (for what?), and various lamps (just needs a new plug and a shade), pieces of plate glass, (I don’t know, maybe coasters?).
It’s easy to establish the origins of my father’s packrat nature. My father lived on a farm in Saskatchewan during the Dirty Thirties. In those days, things were not thrown out, they were simply set aside until another use for them could be found. People had so few things, and the sense of community was so strong, that things were repurposed, repaired or shared, rather than dumped. Add that history to a tartan genetic code, and the results are predictable.
So, I guess it’s not surprising that the shed sprang up the way it did.
Across the street, the sounds of prybars and chainsaws began, and so did I. With the approval of my neighbor, and her builder and the demolition crew, I began to scrounge. The roof came off to expose 16 thirteen foot 2x6s. They became studs for the walls. The 2x10 fascia boards were discarded and became the floor joists. Triangle shaped plywood cutoffs from the new roof were born again in a crazy geometry lesson of a floor. A leftover 4 foot section of clear 4x4 yellow cedar was cut and hand split to become a design detail under the gable.
As my two sons and a conscripted neighbor boy worked away, I would enumerate the savings. “Look at this! This piece of 2x6 would cost $8 in the store”, I’d say, grinning away, and the 14 year olds would roll their eyes as loudly as they could.
The two best scrounges of the project came at the end of the construction. I had sided the front of the shed with some reclaimed cedar siding from a fence I had torn down to put up the shed, and I was short cedar for the long side. Resigned to having to go to the cedar mills on River Road, I loaded up the trailer with the few non-usable odds and ends from the job, and headed for the dump, intending to pick up the cedar in the same load.
Imagine my surprise as I was dumping my odd and ends into the bin at the dump when a fellow pulls up with his trailer and is dumping perfect 1x10 pieces of cedar siding from a garage he was tearing down. After some intricate negotiations with the crew at the dump, I filled up my trailer from his, and headed home, loaded down with more cedar than I needed for the job, saving about $200 and part of a tree, and diverting a little waste from the landfill.
A small bit of waste to be sure. Each year the GVRD accepts 1.2 million tons of garbage, but 64% is construction waste. An additional 400,000 tons of demolition and construction waste is sent to private landfills. The only bright in this dark picture is the 70 % that is actually recycled. In fact, the GVRD is one of the leaders in construction waste recycling, with streams for concrete, asphalt, wood, and green waste. Good for us, bad for the rest of North America.
The finishing touch for the job was the shelving for the inside, and for those I turned to Delta Freecycle. I posted a request for storage units and within a day, two offers for shelving appeared in my mailbox. Freecycling is a movement that began in May 2003 to promote waste reduction in Tucson's downtown and help save desert landscape from being taken over by landfills. In two short years the concept has blossomed with 3,203 groups around the world and 1,793,318 members. In Delta the Freecycle community started in June 2004, and now has over 750 members. To find cool stuff, and to get rid of your usable but not required items, go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Delta_Freecycle/. Another excellent resource is http://www.vancouver.reuses.com/
The end of this story. My four year old and I were biking this week along Central Avenue, where they are tearing down a couple of old houses to make way for four new ones. As we sat and watched the demolitions machines obliterate the old houses, we could catch glimpses of perfectly salvageble lumber before it splintered in the maw of the machine. My son thought a minute, and then said. “You know Dad, there’s some good 2x4s there.” The torch has been passed.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Plastic Bag Taxes
It was pouring rain, and Maggie and I had just settled into bed. As we lay in the darkness listening to the pounding outside, wondering how our new little bean plants, who to this point had only been lovingly hand watered, would take to the thrashing, she rolled over and kissed me and said in her most romantic voice, “Did you remember to take out the garbage?”
Well no, actually, I hadn’t, but thanks for reminding me. So I lay there in the darkness trying to decide if I should leave my warm bed, get dressed, and brave the downpour and the raccoons, or stay warm and dry, and force myself awake early enough to be able to get my garbage bin to the curb before the garbage truck roared and clanked onto the block, woke me up, letting me know that I had missed it. Again.
Tough choice. As I lay there pondering the pros and cons, I let my mind wander to garbage in general, and to Janice Harris, a District of North Vancouver councilor who is advocating a national 25 cent tax on plastic grocery bags.
Her idea is modeled on the Irish Plastax. Introduced in 2002, the tax placed a 15 cent tax on every one of the 1.2 billion plastic grocery bags used by the Irish consumer, and was intended to curb their use. The program was a resounding success, and Irish consumers, like others all the world over, responded quickly to limit their payment of yet another tax. In the first year that the program was implemented the number of grocery bags being used by the Irish fell from 1.2 billion to just 200 million. People were not buying fewer groceries, of course, they had just switched back to reusable bags to lug their purchases home.
Harris suggests that 100% of the tax collected would be used to further recycling initiatives. Currently Canadians take home 50 million plastic grocery bags a day! That works out to an astonishing 18 billion per year. If we are as frugal as the Irish, then our consumption of grocery bags would drop to just 1.8 billion. Sounds like a great idea?
Well, perhaps not. And the more I researched, the more confusing the whole thing became.
The goal of the Plastax is to get people to stop using plastic bags in favour of using re-usable cloth or mesh bags. The result? The Irish did indeed start using re-usable bags to tote their groceries home. They carried their tomatoes, their potatoes, their Guinness, and… purpose-made garbage bin liners. The sale of bin liners QUADRUPLED! It turns out the Irish were already recycling their grocery bags as garbage bags. The net use of plastic bags stayed identical. The Irish government, in a carefully spin doctored notice declared that the program was still a success because, they reasoned, that the grocery bags had been made in Asia whereas the bin liners had been made in Europe, thus saving the oil used to ship them half way around the world,
It sounds as if the Irish, like the apprentice archer, named the target after the arrow left the bow.
So what is the real issue? Is the issue about grocery bags? Is it bigger, is it about plastic? Is it bigger still, is it total garbage? Is it bigger yet, about a solipsistic, narcissistic consumer culture that views the now as more important than the yet to come? This issue highlights the difficulty with all environmental discussions. Without a clear goal stated, and an understanding of the interconnectedness of multiple systems, best summed up with triple bottom line accounting, the best intentions are just paving blocks on the viaduct to the underworld.
When I spoke to Janice, she said that her inspiration for her Canadian Plastax was a story she had read about a dead Minke whale that had washed up on the Normandy coast with 800 kg of plastic bags in its stomach. Plastic in the ocean is a huge toxic problem and she felt a responsibility to do something about the problem. I laud her for that.
Except, of course, as far as I know, Canada, unlike many countries, including the US, doesn’t dump garbage in the ocean. We do have garbage problems, or challenges, if you prefer the spin-speak of our politicians, but at least in the GVRD all of our solid waste is transported to managed landfills, not dumped in the Pacific Ocean.
If we instituted the Plastax it would have the same effect as it had in Ireland, and the total amount of plastic used and discarded would remain exactly the same. At the same time, no less plastic would find its way into the ocean, and no more plastic would find its way into the landfill. Tricky business this doing the right thing.
So let me take a stab at it. In Delta we pay $66 per year per household for garbage removal. A relatively small price to pay for the convenience of having someone take away our trash. Most people pay the garbage and recycling fee along with their taxes and utilities, and for that reason, it is rationalized as free, and because there is no arguing with City Hall, we just all accept it as the fees we pay to live in a tidy society.
The inherent unfairness in the system is the reason that we generate so much garbage. People that put out 10 kilograms of garbage pay the same as someone that puts out 40 kilograms of garbage. Since there is no incremental value placed on the garbage, there is no incentive to take personal action to reduce the amount of garbage that is disposed of. This could be fixed if the city instituted a 3 tier fee system. In this simple system, now known universally as the Laird 3 Tier Color Coded Refuse Fee Structure, L3TCCRF, (who says acronyms have to be catchy?), each house would be given a special garbage can in one of 3 color coded sizes depending on their predicted load. Some families would have no interest in reducing and recycling and would pay a $100 for a large red garbage can. Some families would strive to fill the smallest can, a green one, and pay only $25. Most people would pay $50 for a yellow can. Extra bag tags could be purchased for $2 each at Safeway and Save-On, for those weeks when there was just too much trash. The revenue received from this system would more closely match the amount of garbage generated by each homeowner, and the responsibility for reducing the amount of garbage would be in the hands of the waste generating households. Not only would there be a financial incentive to reduce the amount of garbage generated, there would also be moral suasion, as the color coding would make it obvious who was trying to reduce their environmental impact and who wasn’t.
I believe that this scheme, when combined with education about composting and recycling, would reduce the total garbage heading to the dump by 40%. Now, if I could just figure out what to do with the 48,000 garbage cans that I just made obsolete by the L3TCCRF system. Like I said, tricky business this doing the right thing.
Well no, actually, I hadn’t, but thanks for reminding me. So I lay there in the darkness trying to decide if I should leave my warm bed, get dressed, and brave the downpour and the raccoons, or stay warm and dry, and force myself awake early enough to be able to get my garbage bin to the curb before the garbage truck roared and clanked onto the block, woke me up, letting me know that I had missed it. Again.
Tough choice. As I lay there pondering the pros and cons, I let my mind wander to garbage in general, and to Janice Harris, a District of North Vancouver councilor who is advocating a national 25 cent tax on plastic grocery bags.
Her idea is modeled on the Irish Plastax. Introduced in 2002, the tax placed a 15 cent tax on every one of the 1.2 billion plastic grocery bags used by the Irish consumer, and was intended to curb their use. The program was a resounding success, and Irish consumers, like others all the world over, responded quickly to limit their payment of yet another tax. In the first year that the program was implemented the number of grocery bags being used by the Irish fell from 1.2 billion to just 200 million. People were not buying fewer groceries, of course, they had just switched back to reusable bags to lug their purchases home.
Harris suggests that 100% of the tax collected would be used to further recycling initiatives. Currently Canadians take home 50 million plastic grocery bags a day! That works out to an astonishing 18 billion per year. If we are as frugal as the Irish, then our consumption of grocery bags would drop to just 1.8 billion. Sounds like a great idea?
Well, perhaps not. And the more I researched, the more confusing the whole thing became.
The goal of the Plastax is to get people to stop using plastic bags in favour of using re-usable cloth or mesh bags. The result? The Irish did indeed start using re-usable bags to tote their groceries home. They carried their tomatoes, their potatoes, their Guinness, and… purpose-made garbage bin liners. The sale of bin liners QUADRUPLED! It turns out the Irish were already recycling their grocery bags as garbage bags. The net use of plastic bags stayed identical. The Irish government, in a carefully spin doctored notice declared that the program was still a success because, they reasoned, that the grocery bags had been made in Asia whereas the bin liners had been made in Europe, thus saving the oil used to ship them half way around the world,
It sounds as if the Irish, like the apprentice archer, named the target after the arrow left the bow.
So what is the real issue? Is the issue about grocery bags? Is it bigger, is it about plastic? Is it bigger still, is it total garbage? Is it bigger yet, about a solipsistic, narcissistic consumer culture that views the now as more important than the yet to come? This issue highlights the difficulty with all environmental discussions. Without a clear goal stated, and an understanding of the interconnectedness of multiple systems, best summed up with triple bottom line accounting, the best intentions are just paving blocks on the viaduct to the underworld.
When I spoke to Janice, she said that her inspiration for her Canadian Plastax was a story she had read about a dead Minke whale that had washed up on the Normandy coast with 800 kg of plastic bags in its stomach. Plastic in the ocean is a huge toxic problem and she felt a responsibility to do something about the problem. I laud her for that.
Except, of course, as far as I know, Canada, unlike many countries, including the US, doesn’t dump garbage in the ocean. We do have garbage problems, or challenges, if you prefer the spin-speak of our politicians, but at least in the GVRD all of our solid waste is transported to managed landfills, not dumped in the Pacific Ocean.
If we instituted the Plastax it would have the same effect as it had in Ireland, and the total amount of plastic used and discarded would remain exactly the same. At the same time, no less plastic would find its way into the ocean, and no more plastic would find its way into the landfill. Tricky business this doing the right thing.
So let me take a stab at it. In Delta we pay $66 per year per household for garbage removal. A relatively small price to pay for the convenience of having someone take away our trash. Most people pay the garbage and recycling fee along with their taxes and utilities, and for that reason, it is rationalized as free, and because there is no arguing with City Hall, we just all accept it as the fees we pay to live in a tidy society.
The inherent unfairness in the system is the reason that we generate so much garbage. People that put out 10 kilograms of garbage pay the same as someone that puts out 40 kilograms of garbage. Since there is no incremental value placed on the garbage, there is no incentive to take personal action to reduce the amount of garbage that is disposed of. This could be fixed if the city instituted a 3 tier fee system. In this simple system, now known universally as the Laird 3 Tier Color Coded Refuse Fee Structure, L3TCCRF, (who says acronyms have to be catchy?), each house would be given a special garbage can in one of 3 color coded sizes depending on their predicted load. Some families would have no interest in reducing and recycling and would pay a $100 for a large red garbage can. Some families would strive to fill the smallest can, a green one, and pay only $25. Most people would pay $50 for a yellow can. Extra bag tags could be purchased for $2 each at Safeway and Save-On, for those weeks when there was just too much trash. The revenue received from this system would more closely match the amount of garbage generated by each homeowner, and the responsibility for reducing the amount of garbage would be in the hands of the waste generating households. Not only would there be a financial incentive to reduce the amount of garbage generated, there would also be moral suasion, as the color coding would make it obvious who was trying to reduce their environmental impact and who wasn’t.
I believe that this scheme, when combined with education about composting and recycling, would reduce the total garbage heading to the dump by 40%. Now, if I could just figure out what to do with the 48,000 garbage cans that I just made obsolete by the L3TCCRF system. Like I said, tricky business this doing the right thing.
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Reel men cut lawns
My father was not prone to swearing in front of children, and there were only two times I can remember him letting lose with a malediction. The first was a quickly aborted attempt to teach me to drive, a story best left for another column, and the second was when he lost the top of his baby finger to the gas lawnmower. After the emergency room visit mandated by my mother, who would for years afterwards would use “ the lawn mower incident” as the beginning of one-upmanship stories with other women, Dad discussed the proper safety uses of various power tools, the most important is to turn the darn thing off before you fiddle with it.
The lawnmower was an upgrade, of a sort, from our old push mower. The old push mower was already an antique when we got it, but Dad was handy, and with a bit of sharpening, adjusting and grease, the thing fairly purred as it went across the lawn. But it was heavy, more than 40 pounds and when we moved it was decided to leave it for the next tenants, and buy the to Craftsman Lawn Care Deluxe Model when we got to the new house.
Most of neighbors had already mothballed their reel lawn mowers and purchased gas models. Every Saturday morning, all summer long there was the howl of the Briggs and Stratton engines, the smell of gas, and the sight of large men with small white legs in sticking out of all manner of plaid shorts.
And the traditions continues. Every Saturday in my neighborhood the men folk haul out their gas lawnmowers and follow in their fathers’ footsteps. Not much has changed of course, except that the plaid shorts are worn ironically.
Perhaps more ironic, though, in a world where recycling, fair trade coffee, and organic vegetables are the norm, that we can still buy gas powered lawn mowers, and their annoying little brothers, the gas powered leaf blower and weed whacker.
A quick look at the horrible facts. Small gas motors produce pollution. How much? Well the number blew me away. One a national average 10% of all green house gasses are produced by these little terrors, and in an urban airshed like the Vancouver and Fraser Valley, they contribute 30% of the total air pollution during the summer months. Not only that, because they are inefficient and have no catalytic or other pollution abatement equipment, they produce higher amounts of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (probable cancer causing agents), volatile organic compounds (key precursors to smog) and greenhouse gases (GHG).
A quick mental picture? A conventional lawn mower pollutes as much in an hour as the combined total of 40 cars. Or how about this. A conventional lawn mower pollutes as much in an hour as driving to and from work for two months. Add to that the approximately 87,000 liters of gasoline that is spilled every year in B.C. by jittery-handed lawn cutters, and you have a real problem.
There are three alternatives. Three are 1.) cordless powered electric 2.) corded electric mowers, and 3.) reel mowers.
Electric lawn mowers are quieter than gas mowers and pollute less, but the battery operated models have the problem of end-of-life disposal with their lead batteries. And they still pose safety issues for users and bystanders alike.
By far the best option is the old fashioned reel or push mower. Unlike the antique that my Dad rehabilitated, the new ones are light and easy to push. They produce zero pollution. They are whisper quiet. They are safe enough for children to use. They also have the advantage of cutting rather than tearing the grass, the clean cut meaning that the lawn stays greener and requires less water. (Don’t get me started about watering lawns!) And you don’t have to bag the clippings. Returning clippings to the soil's surface increases biological activity and helps earth worms work the soil below the surface, supports drainage and diverts grass clippings from the landfill. Who would have thought that being lazy would be a good thing for the environment.
I’ve been using a reel lawnmower for 12 years. I don’t intend to change. I’ve converted two of my neighbors from their gas and electric mowers, and if you stop to ask me about my “old fashioned” lawn mower, you’ll end up cutting a few swaths just to prove it to yourself that it is a better way. Drop by any Saturday morning. Just remember to wear your plaid shorts.
The lawnmower was an upgrade, of a sort, from our old push mower. The old push mower was already an antique when we got it, but Dad was handy, and with a bit of sharpening, adjusting and grease, the thing fairly purred as it went across the lawn. But it was heavy, more than 40 pounds and when we moved it was decided to leave it for the next tenants, and buy the to Craftsman Lawn Care Deluxe Model when we got to the new house.
Most of neighbors had already mothballed their reel lawn mowers and purchased gas models. Every Saturday morning, all summer long there was the howl of the Briggs and Stratton engines, the smell of gas, and the sight of large men with small white legs in sticking out of all manner of plaid shorts.
And the traditions continues. Every Saturday in my neighborhood the men folk haul out their gas lawnmowers and follow in their fathers’ footsteps. Not much has changed of course, except that the plaid shorts are worn ironically.
Perhaps more ironic, though, in a world where recycling, fair trade coffee, and organic vegetables are the norm, that we can still buy gas powered lawn mowers, and their annoying little brothers, the gas powered leaf blower and weed whacker.
A quick look at the horrible facts. Small gas motors produce pollution. How much? Well the number blew me away. One a national average 10% of all green house gasses are produced by these little terrors, and in an urban airshed like the Vancouver and Fraser Valley, they contribute 30% of the total air pollution during the summer months. Not only that, because they are inefficient and have no catalytic or other pollution abatement equipment, they produce higher amounts of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (probable cancer causing agents), volatile organic compounds (key precursors to smog) and greenhouse gases (GHG).
A quick mental picture? A conventional lawn mower pollutes as much in an hour as the combined total of 40 cars. Or how about this. A conventional lawn mower pollutes as much in an hour as driving to and from work for two months. Add to that the approximately 87,000 liters of gasoline that is spilled every year in B.C. by jittery-handed lawn cutters, and you have a real problem.
There are three alternatives. Three are 1.) cordless powered electric 2.) corded electric mowers, and 3.) reel mowers.
Electric lawn mowers are quieter than gas mowers and pollute less, but the battery operated models have the problem of end-of-life disposal with their lead batteries. And they still pose safety issues for users and bystanders alike.
By far the best option is the old fashioned reel or push mower. Unlike the antique that my Dad rehabilitated, the new ones are light and easy to push. They produce zero pollution. They are whisper quiet. They are safe enough for children to use. They also have the advantage of cutting rather than tearing the grass, the clean cut meaning that the lawn stays greener and requires less water. (Don’t get me started about watering lawns!) And you don’t have to bag the clippings. Returning clippings to the soil's surface increases biological activity and helps earth worms work the soil below the surface, supports drainage and diverts grass clippings from the landfill. Who would have thought that being lazy would be a good thing for the environment.
I’ve been using a reel lawnmower for 12 years. I don’t intend to change. I’ve converted two of my neighbors from their gas and electric mowers, and if you stop to ask me about my “old fashioned” lawn mower, you’ll end up cutting a few swaths just to prove it to yourself that it is a better way. Drop by any Saturday morning. Just remember to wear your plaid shorts.
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Better Labels, Better World
The idea of consumer education, awareness and responsibility is one that is gaining some traction in activism circles. The idea is that if consumers are aware of the total sum of their actions they will change their actions and behave in a more responsible, sustainable and “green” way.
There are many organizations that strive in through education to change the way consumers behave; PETA (www.peta.org), Greenpeace (www.greenpeace.org), World Wildlife Fund (www.wwf.org), and Natural Resources Defense Council (www.nrdc.org). All four have different ways of trying to change consumers behavior, but my personal favorite are the various Fair Trade Initiatives (www.fairtrade.net) around the world that specifically try to influence consumer behavior through positive labeling schemes.
Maggie and I were talking about this they other day as we stood in Costco and debating which coffee to buy. They carry several brands. Two were organic, and one was fair trade organic. We bought one organic and one fair trade organic, just to try them both out.
Once home, we brewed up a cup, and my mind started doing the jitterbug. “Maggie” I said, “I’ve just had an astonishing idea!” She stood there slack jawed as my ideas raced like a Ferrari across the blacktop of her consciousness. When I was done she took my rest of my coffee and threw it down the sink and walked away. I’m not sure what she meant by that. Oh well.
Consumer responsibility should be part of the labeling act for every product, to allow consumers to be able to make better choices. Imagine if you had truth in labeling? “This product made by child slaves in Bangladesh.” or “50,000 gallons of drinking water was polluted in the manufacture of this product.” How would the jewelry industry react if they had to put the warning “20 tons of cyanide-laced tailings were left in a watershed in a third world country to bring you this product.” on that engagement ring you were thinking about.
Drastic? Yes. But the labels on the coffee in Costco allowed us to make a choice. We knew that the brands that weren’t organically certified, or fair-trade certified were products that were produced with pesticides and predatory price structures by large multi national companies ill concerned with the growers or the environment. Nutritional labeling and organic certification have gone a long way to making sure companies produce food that is healthy for both the grower and the consumer.
Perhaps it’s time to move away from the obscure to the exact in an effort to let the consumer, who is after all responsible for 100% of the pollution in the world, be able to make the best choices.
There are many organizations that strive in through education to change the way consumers behave; PETA (www.peta.org), Greenpeace (www.greenpeace.org), World Wildlife Fund (www.wwf.org), and Natural Resources Defense Council (www.nrdc.org). All four have different ways of trying to change consumers behavior, but my personal favorite are the various Fair Trade Initiatives (www.fairtrade.net) around the world that specifically try to influence consumer behavior through positive labeling schemes.
Maggie and I were talking about this they other day as we stood in Costco and debating which coffee to buy. They carry several brands. Two were organic, and one was fair trade organic. We bought one organic and one fair trade organic, just to try them both out.
Once home, we brewed up a cup, and my mind started doing the jitterbug. “Maggie” I said, “I’ve just had an astonishing idea!” She stood there slack jawed as my ideas raced like a Ferrari across the blacktop of her consciousness. When I was done she took my rest of my coffee and threw it down the sink and walked away. I’m not sure what she meant by that. Oh well.
Consumer responsibility should be part of the labeling act for every product, to allow consumers to be able to make better choices. Imagine if you had truth in labeling? “This product made by child slaves in Bangladesh.” or “50,000 gallons of drinking water was polluted in the manufacture of this product.” How would the jewelry industry react if they had to put the warning “20 tons of cyanide-laced tailings were left in a watershed in a third world country to bring you this product.” on that engagement ring you were thinking about.
Drastic? Yes. But the labels on the coffee in Costco allowed us to make a choice. We knew that the brands that weren’t organically certified, or fair-trade certified were products that were produced with pesticides and predatory price structures by large multi national companies ill concerned with the growers or the environment. Nutritional labeling and organic certification have gone a long way to making sure companies produce food that is healthy for both the grower and the consumer.
Perhaps it’s time to move away from the obscure to the exact in an effort to let the consumer, who is after all responsible for 100% of the pollution in the world, be able to make the best choices.
Pamela Anderson Dubious Celebrity Clear Cut Song
The Pamela Anderson Dubious Celebrity Clearcut Song
There’s a hillside out of Castlegar
And as far as you can see
All the trees are missing
It’s such a tragedy.
Some loggers came and took them,
but they’re not the ones to blame
they’re just trying to feed their kiddies
and isn’t it a shame?
The company they work for
points to the invisible hand
“We’ve done nothing here illegal
and our profits sure are grand!”
Well some folks up at the Chamber
came up with a brainstorm
“We’ll make lemonade with lemons
and make the tourists come!”
So they named it.
Named the clearcut.
Called it the Pamela Anderson Dubious Celebrity Clearcut!!!
And strangely enough in a fit of self-referential irony Pamela herself came to cut the ribbon
And that photo opportunity meant that another 37.3 acres of trees had to be
Cut down and turned into paper so we could read…..
About the Pamela Anderson Dubious Celebrity Clearcut.
I wonder if she gets it
Does she really know
That her dubious celebrity is the cause
Of so many trees to go
Into the pulping grinders
And the celebrity bray
That cranks out check stand fodder
At the neighborhood Safeway
So if you want to save our forests
The best thing you can do
Is stop buying all those magazines like
Intouch and Wow and You!
There’s a hillside out of Castlegar
And as far as you can see
All the trees are missing
It’s such a tragedy.
Some loggers came and took them,
but they’re not the ones to blame
they’re just trying to feed their kiddies
and isn’t it a shame?
The company they work for
points to the invisible hand
“We’ve done nothing here illegal
and our profits sure are grand!”
Well some folks up at the Chamber
came up with a brainstorm
“We’ll make lemonade with lemons
and make the tourists come!”
So they named it.
Named the clearcut.
Called it the Pamela Anderson Dubious Celebrity Clearcut!!!
And strangely enough in a fit of self-referential irony Pamela herself came to cut the ribbon
And that photo opportunity meant that another 37.3 acres of trees had to be
Cut down and turned into paper so we could read…..
About the Pamela Anderson Dubious Celebrity Clearcut.
I wonder if she gets it
Does she really know
That her dubious celebrity is the cause
Of so many trees to go
Into the pulping grinders
And the celebrity bray
That cranks out check stand fodder
At the neighborhood Safeway
So if you want to save our forests
The best thing you can do
Is stop buying all those magazines like
Intouch and Wow and You!
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