January 2009

  • Zero Waste Week

    By erika on 1/27/09 6:37am
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    This is Zero Waste Week in the town of Gloucestershire, England. The town is challenging participants to go an entire week without throwing anything away - or throwing away as little as possible.

    I'm already on what you might call a garbage diet. Several years ago I set up a worm box, which I use to recycle all of my food scraps and coffee grounds. The great thing about a worm box as opposed to a compost bin is that it works a lot faster (which helps prevent molds and fruit flies), and it can take a wider variety of items. My worms can eat cooked items, which you're not supposed to throw in the compost.

    Since I work from home, I cook all of my meals, which has also kept down my garbage load. I started making all of my meals from scratch to save money. I soon found that it saved garbage, as well!

    I go through a tall kitchen bag of garbage every two weeks. That's not bad! But reading about Zero Waste Week, I realized that I could do better.

    For one thing, I could be buying more items in bulk, and storing them in glass mason jars.

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  • Water Conservation in Southern Nevada

    By gmcheeseman on 1/17/09 5:31pm
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    In a city known for greed and opulence, Las Vegas is conserving water. A city ordinance says, “Waste of water in the City is hereby prohibited and declared unlawful.” The focus of Las Vegas water conservation efforts are on residential areas, which use 65 percent of the area’s water. The Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) estimates that 35 percent of water usage is for turfgrass and landcape. “Southern Nevada's conservation success centers around the efforts of homeowners and business owners to reduce water waste.”

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  • A Smart Electrical Grid is Needed

    By gmcheeseman on 1/17/09 12:33pm
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    President-elect Barack Obama told Congress this week that we need to “do more to retrofit America for a global economy…that means updating the way we get our electricity by starting to build a new smart grid that will save us money, protect our power sources from blackout or attack and deliver clean, alternative forms of energy to every corner of our nation.”

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  • Bush Moves to Protect Oceans

    By erika on 1/14/09 7:29am
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    Hey, I am as surprised by this as you are! George W. Bush, the president with the worst ecological record in American history, has signed legislation which designates several areas of American controlled ocean as "marine national monuments."

    The list of protected sites includes parts of the Mariana Trench, and the Line Islands, a collection of reefs and atolls outside American Samoa. The total amount of protected ocean is "195,280 square miles, an area larger than the states of Washington and Oregon combined."

    America's first Marine National Monument was Papahanaumokuakea (say THAT three times fast) in Hawaii, which was designated as such in 2006. Papahanaumokuakea (boy am I thankful for copy and paste) is an area larger than all of the American national parks combined. It encompasses a variety of marine terrain, including coral reefs and shallow ocean areas, as well as several sites of cultural and historical importance.

    Access to Papahanaumokuakea is closely regulated, and visitors must fill out an application and receive a permit before being approved for entry.

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  • A Life Without Plastic

    By erika on 1/12/09 9:05am
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    Chicago Tribune reporter Trine Tsouderos recently documented her attempt to live without plastic for an entire week. While it is easy to criticize Tsouderos' methods, her article creates a stark portrayal of how plastic has worked itself into every aspect of our lives - and sometimes, there simply is no other substitute.

    Plastic has recently come under fire with the findings about bisphenol-A, a cancer-causing chemical found in many kinds of plastics. The jury is still out on whether or not bisphenol-A is actually released into your foods as part of a natural outgassing process, although it does seem to be released more easily when the plastic is heated (as when you microwave leftovers in a plastic container).

    Although there is no evidence to support fears that we are all being slowly poisoned by our plastics, there is the growing environmental crisis about plastic disposal. Plastic is of course a petroleum product, and therefore contributes both to environmental destruction and to our carbon footprint as a species.

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  • Household solar returns?

    By erika on 1/8/09 9:57am
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    Until the end of 2007, homeowners could take a 30% tax credit for up to $2000 for the installation of solar panels or a solar heating system in their homes. Unfortunately, this program came up for renewal in 2007, and it bogged down in Congress over questions about where the tax break money would come from. The argument was never resolved, the tax break expired at the end of 2007, and has not yet been renewed.

    A $2000 tax break for a homeowner installing a $40,000 solar panel system is pretty significant - particularly since that system will eventually pay for itself. When the tax break lapsed, the market (both commercial and residential) for solar panel installations suffered immensely.

    President Elect Barack Obama has been touting green energy solutions throughout his campaign. In his speech this morning, he vowed to "improve the energy efficiency of 2 million American homes." The energy plan he is trying to pass will include a reinstatement of the solar panel tax credit.

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