Category Archives: Green Ideas

Turning off the air

Air conditioning is nearly ubiquitous in the U.S. these days, but it wasn’t that long ago when people everywhere survived without A/C.  For various reasons, including economic and environmental, some people are voluntarily returning to life without artificial cooling.  To read about it, including benefits and strategies for beating the heat, see this article.

As the author points out, after the advent of air conditioning, builders no longer constructed homes and other buildings for natural cooling.  Unfortunately, our four-family brick apartment building demonstrates the new building paradigm all too well.  Fortunately, we enjoyed an unseasonably cool July and, despite the brick oven effect, spent most of the month with no A/C.  However, no one else in our building seemed to get the memo that it actually was not that hot outside, and their A/C units chugged away.

Vegetarian II

In the 4.5 years since I stopped eating meat, my reasons for being vegetarian have evolved from my initial focus on health and preventing chronic disease.  That is still important, but now I have other compelling reasons, environmental impact and social justice being at the top of the list.

Most people will not choose as I have and give up meat entirely, and that is fine.  Rather, think about ways to eat less meat: reduce portion sizes, incorporate meatless meals every week, and encourage others to do the same.

Recent reading, including the book I mention here, provides evidence that animals (and meat) can be raised and consumed in ways that sustain the environment.  If you do eat meat, try to find a local source.   Take the time to talk to the cow/chicken/pig farmer and find out about his/her practices.  Go visit the farm and see the animals.  What do they feed the animals?  How do they handle the manure?

For now, I am happy and healthy as a vegetarian.  My diet includes eggs and a moderate amount of dairy.  The eggs are from local free-range or pasture-raised hens.  The milk and some of the cheese comes from an in-state dairy.  Other cheese comes from smaller, local farmers.

Will I ever eat meat again?  Maybe.  But I will do so with some pretty high standards.

Confessional, or “Chocolate, avocados, and olive oil”

I wrote here about bananas’ large carbon footprint.  For better (it is not eternal summer here) and for worse (long distance from all the good food that grows there), I do not live in a tropical climate.  Despite eliminating bananas, there are other foods that I like to eat that just do not grow here.  In thinking about the foods I consume regularly or somewhat regularly, three main items come to mind: avocados, chocolate, and olive oil.

There was a time when I couldn’t imagine living without chocolate.  Are you kidding me?  I couldn’t even imagine getting through an entire day without eating chocolate.  Not lots of chocolate at one time, I was generally pretty moderate, but there was SOME chocolate every day.  While I will not be growing cacao seeds in my yard anytime soon, and don’t plan to completely abstain, there are some ways to make chocolate friendlier.  1) Buy fair trade organic chocolate made from sustainably grown cacao.  This means that instead of destroying rain forest to grow the chocolate, it was grown in the shade of other trees, by farmers who were paid a living wage and encouraged to farm sustainably.  2) Consume less chocolate.

Unless you have lots of money to burn, number one will naturally lead to number two, because fair trade organic chocolate is significantly more expensive than the alternative.  On the upside, it is also a higher quality chocolate, so you are more likely to be satisfied with a small amount.  The planet and your waistline will thank you.

We have not made this switch completely; it is a work in progress.  Most of the chocolate bars we purchase fit the fair trade, organic bill.  We also have a source for chocolate chips, but first we need to finish the stockpile of regular (not-so-earth-friendly) chocolate chips that I purchased during a good sale last year.

Reality check

Climate science can be a tricky thing to grasp.  I am by no means an expert, but one helpful starting point is understanding the difference between “climate” and “weather.”  Click here for a relatively easy to understand definition.  When scientists talk about global warming, they are talking about climate change.

As much as I enjoyed the cool July weather in the Midwestern U.S. this year, I also worried, because I knew someone, somewhere, was thinking, “Well, so much for global warming.”   As explained by the link above, it is not that simple.

A recent NOAA news release and a Newsweek article keep things in perspective:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2009/jun/global.html

http://www.newsweek.com/id/208164

The reality may not be pretty.  It remains to be seen, whether we, collectively, as inhabitants of Earth, will act quickly enough, and make changes that are big enough, to turn this ship around.  But I live my life as I do, hoping it will be a model for others, because I think we can do it, because for all life on this planet we have to do it, and because future generations (our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren) deserve better than what we’re currently on course to give them.

Maybe we should open this box outside

On my last trip to visit my parents, my dear mother confronted me with a couple of boxes of my stuff that were taking up space in my old bedroom.  Apparently, that situation was no longer acceptable.  Fortunately, I was able to wade through it rather quickly.  The boxes consisted largely of books, including textbooks that I really should have gotten rid of a few years ago, when they were actually worth something and someone could have used them.  But they were science textbooks, and I still thought medical school and studying for the MCAT might be in my future.  Not so much.

I could have taken the easy route and trashed the textbooks, but I wanted to investigate a greener alternative, so I carted the books back home with me.  I could not find a local outlet for them, but after a little digging, I found Better World Books.  They were willing to accept all but two of my books, and since I donated them, the shipping was free.  I packed them all up in a decently sturdy box with lots of packing tape — it was very heavy — and dropped it off at the post office on July 17.

Yesterday afternoon (July 29), my husband opened our front door and found a large box sitting on the porch.  Neither of us was expecting a package.  It was addressed ambiguously, with just the initial for the first name (which is M for both of us) and then the last name.  No return address.  We debated whether or not to open it out on the porch, just to be safe.  At this point, I had not seen the package, but apparently had some sort of premonition that it might involve those books I had tried to donate.  I asked if it was heavy, and he said yes.

He brought the package into the apartment, opened it up, and out came lots of white powder.  And then we caught anthrax and died.  The end.

Oh wait, I am still alive writing this.  Where was I?  We opened the box (not my original shipping box, by the way) and found my original packing list and a letter from the USPS saying my box had been damaged and some contents had been lost.  In fact, of the 8 books that I had been trying to donate, only 3 were in the box.  But that was not all.

Apparently, the USPS also damaged someone else’s package and had thrown some of his belongings in the box they returned to me.  No word on any of my other books.  We are now the proud owners of a very large map of the United States, some guy’s drawings of scantily clad women, and a book of short stories, the contents of which would qualify as soft core porn, in case you were wondering.  All because I was donating textbooks for reuse.  You can’t make this stuff up.