Author Archives: Melissa | Growing Green Nutrition

Energy Hog

We use relatively little electricity because most of our high energy items (furnace, hot water heater, stove/oven) are gas.  (This is not an intentional decision that we think is somehow better environmentally, it’s just the way our apartment is set up.)  The air conditioning uses by far the most electricity, so our highest kilowatt hour (kWh) months are usually July and August, followed by June and September.  We just received a “Personal Energy Report” from our electric provider, showing monthly usage over the past year, and were shocked to see that our electric usage in December was on par with that in June and more than double that in November. And the higher trend continued in January, February, and March.  We were definitely NOT running A/C in December or any of the months immediately following.

So what happened between November and December?  We purchased a deep freeze.  After a decent bit of research, we decided on a chest freezer (rather than an upright), because even the most energy efficient uprights use more energy than the average chest.  Since buying used is greener (environmentally and on the pocketbook) than buying new, we were happy to find a 2-year-old chest freezer on Craigslist.  So in late November or early December, we wrangled the thing down our basement stairs (a near death experience), plugged it in, and began filling it with food.  It allows us to buy certain goods in bulk, thereby reducing car trips to the grocery store, as well as grow extra food (or buy extra local and in season) and preserve it for winter, thereby extending our local eating.

Now, we suspect that it may be chewing through energy like none other.  There are a few other factors that may have explained some of the energy increase, but none were consistent over the 4 inordinately high months or fit so perfectly with the timing of the initial increase other than the deep freeze.

We plan to further investigate the matter by purchasing a electricity usage monitor that will allow us to test how much electricity any appliance we plug into it is pulling.  I will post the results of our sleuthing as they become available.

I heart ducklings

Duckling butts
Duckling butts

Despite looking so hard that I almost rode my bike off of a bridge, I missed the ducklings in the park that is on my daily commute this year.  However, I was treated to these little guys at Botany Pond on the UChicago campus.  They were past the little yellow fluff ball (i.e., super cute) stage, but they were still pretty darn cute, especially when they started going bottoms up in their search for food.

Be Prepared

Sometimes being green requires advance planning and an awareness of opportunities to green a “not green” situation.  One such instance occurred over the weekend, and I was uncharacteristically unprepared.

We traveled to Chicago to attend some of the husband’s University of Chicago reunion events.  My standard M.O. when approaching situations where food or beverages may be served on/in disposables is to bring my own non-disposable option.  However, I dropped the ball on that when packing for the weekend, which is how we came to be at the “alumni picnic lunch” on Saturday faced with a sea of soon-to-be trash.  Since serving food directly from the buffet tables into my mouth would, for some reason, not have been acceptable behavior, I acquiesced to social mores and used the disposable plates and utensils.  At least we had our stainless steel water bottle with us and avoided the dreaded plastic cup.

Next up: Saturday night, for the $40 per person alumni dinner (well, young alumni only paid $20 per person, but the point is that a lot of people there paid a good chunk of change for the meal).  The price tag for this event caused me to assume that CERTAINLY they would serve this meal on real dishes to be eaten with real silverware with beverages in real glasses.  I was SO certain, in fact, that I did not even bring the water bottle.  Well, you know what happens when you assume.  We were faced with yet another meal of disposables, including the plastic cups this time.  Besides being bad for the environment, it was just plain tacky to use disposables in this situation.

I am looking forward to the “Please tell us what you thought of alumni weekend” feedback form.  If we do not get one of those, I will hunt down some contact information so I can tell them anyway.

For the sake of fairness, I will add that they were not using just any disposables.  The plates were some form of heavy paperboard that most likely made from recycled materials.  The plastic ware (both cups and utensils) were made from corn and were, theoretically, compostable.  (My spell check does not think compostable is a word, but I beg to differ.)  This is a nice idea, and might appease some environmental objectors, but the problem is that most of these “compostable” disposables end up in landfills right along with the rest of our garbage, in which conditions are not right for composting.

So your best bet is using completely non-disposable alternatives and being prepared.  For lightness and ease of transport, I prefer plastic plates (heavy duty, made for many uses), metal utensils, and a plastic bike water bottle or stainless steel bottle.  I keep a set in my office for work potlucks or other food-at-work opportunities and we have a set for two that we bring to picnics, potlucks, etc.  I met someone who always keeps a set in her car so she will not be caught off guard.  A little preparation and planning can go a long way.

Road Trip

Confession: Despite the fact that there were a couple of valid mass transit options for the trek from here to Chicago (namely, Amtrak and Megabus), we drove.  I feel somewhat guilty about this (not the losing sleep kind of guilt, though), although I could offer a few somewhat legitimate reasons for opting for the “not green” way.  But the bottom line is that we chose the car.  The next time will be one of the above-mentioned methods — no excuses.

However, once we arrived in Chicago, we snagged a parking space and then happily abandoned our car for three days of walking with a bit of public transit thrown in the mix, so things did get greener.  And there were lots of bikers, which I always like to see,  although most of the bikers I saw were college kids who were not willing to ride ONE BLOCK extra to go the right way on the one way streets.  ONE BLOCK.  My companions explained that when the average trip length was four blocks, this was actually significant.  Yes, significantly lazy.

There were some other “not green” highlights of the trip that will be the subject of another post.