Category Archives: waste

Recycling and Fall Gardening – Yes they have things in common

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I was at a food meeting yesterday at LLCC and Wes King pointed out that composting and fall crop covers are actually recycling of the ultimate sort. Taking organic matter and letting it turn back into soil and crops that will turned under in the spring are so to speak, nature’s way and direct recycling. This as opposed to taking stuff to a center where they then ship it off to an actual reprocessing plant many miles away. Since it is October what better things to discuss. First up composting at work and yes it can be done.

http://greenliving.nationalgeographic.com/compost-work-2971.html

How to Compost at Work

by Jeannette Belliveau, Demand Media

If you’re already conserving energy, reusing and recycling paper and purchasing green office products at work, the next big step can be composting on the job and using it to green the surrounding landscape. If your office property permits use of the grounds in this manner, you can compost on site, and if it doesn’t, you can still pursue other avenues to keep the compostable food waste from going into the garbage. (See References 1)

Getting Started

Assemble a workplace “Green Team” with committed leaders managing your office compost program (see References 3). Kick things off by publicizing your switch to a three-stream waste system, whereby the office will provide separate receptacles for trash, recycling and compost (see References 1, p. 98). An educational poster or exhibit near the lunch room can explain the program (see References 5). Place sealable containers for compost in your office kitchen, food preparation area or snack room. These can be 13-gallon kitchen waste cans or smaller lidded buckets (see References 3). Employees can add coffee grounds, tea bags, vegetable wastes and eggshells to these bin (see References 1, p. 126). Avoid adding meat and diary waste.

Process

A designated member of the Green Team can collect the food waste daily from the snack room and other collection points and place it in the central container or directly into the composter. It’s better to assign this duty to a Green Team member rather than custodial staff to better keep an eye on what is going into the composter, recommends the City of Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. Your office may be able to switch to collecting food waste two to three times a week depending on how much volume you see. (See References 3)

Composter Types

Your composter set-up should match your needs and business aesthetics, recommends Trish Riley and Heather Gadonniex in “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Greening Your Business (see References 1).” Options include a compost tumbler or plastic compost bins and digesters if you have access to garden space and want to avoid the tumbledown look of a loose or fenced compost bin. If you don’t have a yard or grassy area for the compost, you can use an electronic composter that dries and automatically stirs the compost or a worm bin. (See References 2, p. 20)

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Transition Community In Houston – One of hundreds around the US

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I leave you this week in Houston. An oil ton if there ever was one. Got to love a group that is trying to do without hydrocarbons altogether. They claim they are moving to a new site BUT I couldn’t get there yet, so here is a sample of their old site.

http://transitionhouston.wordpress.com/

Movin’ on…

The website subgroup of the Outreach and Education Action Group has been working on an updated website for Transition Houston for some time, and all that effort is paying off!  We are going to concentrate our information share and move content to the new site:  www.transitionhouston.org.  Please bookmark that location and check with us often for news about Transition in the Houston region, Neighborhood Initiative and Action Group updates, calendar, newsletter archive, and more!

Once again, the new Transition Houston website:

www.transitionhouston.org

 

There are several other options for connecting with us.

We are on Ning.

We are on Facebook.

We are on Twitter.

And you can subscribe to our Newsletter!

Permaculture goes mainstream, hope rises

Sometimes little things give hope that progress is possible, and that maybe “if we act as communities, it might just be enough, just in time,” to quote the Cheerful Disclaimer.  This last week the little thing for me was the discovery of permaculture by the New York Times.  Now, I’m not so naive to believe that seeing permaculture in the mainstream press is going to make a lot of difference immediately, although I wouldn’t be surprised to see a surge of interest in permie classes across the country with long-term benefits to both participants and the environment (FYI, classes are offered here in Houston by the Permaculture Guild of Houston, through Urban Harvest).

I think the important point is that awareness is growing in our country:  awareness of our ecosystem impacts, awareness of the lack of sustainability in our lifestyles and economy, and also awareness of that which is missing in our lives–community, connection, purpose.  Permaculture is a positive response to that growing awareness, as is the permaculture-based Transition movement.

There are a couple of opportunities to join with others in our Transition Houston community this week and next.  Please avail yourself of these options to increase your awareness and find connection with a community of folks working for a resilient Houston region.

Transition Houston Hub meeting, Tuesday, August 2, 7:00pm to 9:00pm

Green Film Series Presents Blue Gold: World Water Wars, Tuesday, August 9, 6:30pm to 9:00pm

Transition Houston Hub meeting, Tuesday, August 2, 7:00pm to 9:00pm
We hope to see you at Tuesday’s Transition Houston meeting, which will feature a guest speaker in addition to news from the Transition Neighborhoods and Action Groups.

We are very fortunate to have Peter Wang, League of American Bicyclists Cycling Instructor, as our guest speaker.  Peter is considered a local biking expert.  He’s everywhere as a go-to guy for media interviews about bikes, and has been involved in a lot of bicycle issues.  He is risk-averse–exactly the kind of guy you would want to help you practice being safer!–and has taught a lot of these safety classes.

Peter will present a video screening followed by a discussion. The video is Enjoy The Ride, about essential bicycling skills.

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More whenever.

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Transition Communities Up North – Get going Canada

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I love Brit speak. Some groups are not undecided they are mulling things over. Anyway there is a great list at the end of this article so go check it out.

http://citizenactionmonitor.wordpress.com/2010/09/23/canadas-transition-communities/

Canada’s Transition Communities

23 Sep

No 67 Posted September 23, 2010

IMPORTANT UPDATE, Jan. 7, 2011: Ten *NEW* communities added to the List of Canadian Transition Communities (below).

What is a Transition Community?

The following text is excerpted and adapted from Ball’s research paper, Transition Towns: Local Networking for Global Sustainability?

The Transition Movement, promoting an action-based approach to (local) sustainability, has in the past four years grown to incorporate a large network of individual Transition Initiatives. Informed by ideas and values within environmental organizations, yet, in its practical organisation it is distinct from past models of sustainability by incorporating broad grassroots support in a diverse range of places within the framework of a coherent networking model.

Sustainability challenges the dominant, market-based capitalism of industrial society, on economic, social, environmental and ecological grounds, citing devastating ecological and environmental exploitation. Sustainability, in contrast, calls for production and consumption within long-term ecological limits.

While local sustainability has become a politically important goal, in practice neither top-down government nor grassroots community models have gained widespread uptake or success: the former have failed to connect with or involve a grassroots public; the latter generally have few resources and limited capacity.

The Transition Model, a non-governmental community-led model, advances an action-based approach. With its fast-growing network of Initiatives, the Transition Movement is akin to a non-profit franchise operation, combining the advantage of a centralized support base with the capacity and resources of a decentralized networking organization.

The Transition concept, co-founded by Rob Hopkins, who has a background in permaculture, builds upon a core thesis: that the modern industrial capitalist economic and social system, based upon cheap oil and resources, is unsustainable, making a major restructuring of economy and society imperative, and inevitable. Transition contends that citizens and communities need to act proactively and positively at the local scale, in a process of ‘Transition’ and ‘Powerdown’ to build localized and resilient communities in terms of food, energy, work and waste. The vision holds that decarbonized local communities will be resilient in their capacity to “hold together and maintain their ability to function in the face of change and shock from the outside.” Transition is modelled to be a self-organizing community-led model, for people to “act now and act collectively.”

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Why I Have Been Posting About Transition Communities – The basic arguement

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Today I found two articles that define the pros and cons of Transition Communities. I would tend to call one selfish and foolish. I would call the other one “heads up”, but that is just me. I do not want to take up the space with both complete articles so I will post a taste of each.

PRO

http://peakoilmatters.com/2011/09/14/a-vision-for-the-post-peak-oil-future-pt-6/

In a harsher future we’re now in the process of consigning our children and grandchildren to, this is okay?

When so much power and prosperity is confined to so few, what then? As more and more is stripped away from more and more in order to protect the few, greater inequality will result, and a much larger percentage of those so far unaffected by that disparity will then fall into the have-nots, including our children and grandchildren—and perhaps many more of us.

Of course we ought to be legitimately worried about what massive debt will do for the prospects and opportunities of our children and grandchildren, but if we aren’t also doing all that we can right now to provide the programs and resources and opportunities and investments to innovate and grow starting now, they’ll be faced with the double whammy of the burdens of great debt and no viable means to address the problem! What a wonderful prospect … but thank God the wealthy will be okay!

“What is the crisis we face today? We have an economy scarred by mass unemployment, falling wages, and growing insecurity. In the downturn, a staggering 40 percent of American households have been afflicted by unemployment, negative home equity (‘under water homes’ worth less than their mortgages), mortgage payment arrears, or foreclosure. In November 2008, one quarter of Americans aged 50-59 reported that they’d lost more than 35 percent of their retirement savings.

“The [wage] imbalances were obscene before the recession, with finance capturing 40 percent of corporate profits, the wealthiest 1 percent capturing half of the benefits of economic growth, the US running soaring trade deficits, even in high technology products, with China and the world. Our decaying infrastructure, broken health care system, declining educational performance in relation to the industrial world all preceded the fall….

“The right question we need to ask, I would argue, is what is the new strategy, the new foundation for an economy that offers hope for rebuilding America’s economic vitality in the competitive global market place? This requires a clear and bold strategy for revitalizing American manufacturing. It requires investments in areas vital to our future — in modern infrastructure, in education and training, in research and innovation. We need to capture a lead in the green industrial revolution that is sweeping the world. It requires new trade strategy, shackles on financial speculation, empowering workers to capture a fair share of the productivity and profits they help generate to help rebuild America’s middle class. We have to figure out how to afford this, financing what we can, changing priorities and raising revenues where needed. But this is a far different question than just how we get our books in order.” [3]

As Mr. Borosage noted at the conclusion of the passage just quoted: “It is hard to get the right answer when you ask the wrong question.”

CON

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/06/12/bjorn-lomborg-explains-how-to-save-the-planet.html


A Roadmap for the Planet

Jun 12, 2011 10:00 AM EDT

How we live today is clearly unsustainable. Why history proves that is completely irrelevant.

From the 18th through the mid-19th century, whale oil provided light to much of the Western world. At its peak, whaling employed 70,000 people and was the United States’ fifth-largest industry. The U.S. stood as the world’s foremost whale slayer. Producing millions of gallons of oil each year, the industry was widely seen as unassailable, with advocates scoffing at would-be illumination substitutes like lard oil and camphene. Without whale oil, so the thinking went, the world would slide backward toward darkness.

By today’s standard, of course, slaughtering whales is considered barbaric.

Two hundred years ago there was no environmental movement to speak of. But one wonders if the whalers, finding that each year they needed to go farther afield from Nantucket Island to kill massive sea mammals, ever asked themselves: what will happen when we run out of whales?

Such questions today constitute the cornerstone of the ever-louder logic of sustainability.

Climate alarmists and campaigning environmentalists argue that the industrialized countries of the world have made sizable withdrawals on nature’s fixed allowance, and unless we change our ways, and soon, we are doomed to an abrupt end. Take the recent proclamation from the United Nations Environment Program, which argued that governments should dramatically cut back on the use of resources. The mantra has become commonplace: our current way of living is selfish and unsustainable. We are wrecking the world. We are gobbling up the last resources. We are cutting down the rainforest. We are polluting the water. We are polluting the air. We are killing plants and animals, destroying the ozone layer, burning the world through our addiction to fossil fuels, and leaving a devastated planet for future generations.

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More tomorrow.

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Transition Communities – Live in the flesh

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This is a pretty good discussion of the sustainability component of it. I apologize up front for just posting the video connection and not much more. I am terrible at posting videos.

http://vimeo.com/28881870

Five minutes with Dave Hamilton
2 days ago
More
See all Show me 
nu project’s videos
 
5. Five minutes with Dave Hamilton 
12 days ago
 
2. Hackney City Farm  
by nu project1 year ago
Dave Hamilton has a degree in Nutrition, is a professional foraging,food and gardening writer. He lives in Devon, where he grows and forages for most of his own food and teaches horticulture.

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But here is more about the guy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Hamilton_%28author%29

Dave Hamilton (author)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

David John Hamilton (born 1974) British author, Journalist, Gardener and Forager.[1][2] Born in Northampton he now lives in Totnes, Devon.

He attended Weston Favell School in Northampton where he slipped through the education system graduating with only three G.C.S.E’s above C grade including English language.

He has lived all over the UK and amongst other things has worked as a market trader in Camden Stables Market and in Anjuna India, a postman and a gardener in Oxford and a driver’s mate and factory worker in Northampton.[3]

He later returned to education and whilst studying a BSc in Nutrition and Food Science at Oxford Brookes he began growing his own food.[4] Realising there were still bills to and full self-sufficiency was very difficult he coined the term ‘Self-Sufficientish’ which later was adopted by the website he runs with his twin brother.[5]

The website led to the publishing of his first book, with Andy Hamilton, The Self Sufficient-ish Bible: An Eco-living Guide for the 21st Century (ISBN 978-0340951026) [6]

He now lives in Devon where he is following another of his passions, that of plants, by training to be a sustainable horticulturist at the Dutchy College run course at the Schumacher College in Dartington. Along with fellow students on the course Dave has started up a sustainable bee keeping group using methods championed by Phil Chandler.[7]

He occasionally appears on TV and radio and writes a regular column for Alan Moores underground magazine Dodgem Logic.[8] He also contributes to Grow It Magazine and Country Small Holder.

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Transition Communities – A high tech guy with a low tech place

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This is a pretty complete piece about an oil savvy guy. It is a long piece so go and read the rest.

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/49304

Published Jun 17 2009 by North Bay Bohemian, Archived Jun 23 2009

Transition communities gear up for society’s collapse with a shovel and a smile

by Alastair Bland

Cheer Up, It’s Going to Get Worse

Three years ago, David Fridley purchased two and a half acres of land in rural Sonoma County. He planted drought-resistant blue Zuni corn, fruit trees and basic vegetables while leaving a full acre of extant forest for firewood collection. Today, Fridley and several friends and family subsist almost entirely off this small plot of land, with the surplus going to public charity.

HOW DOES YOUR...: Home food production is an 'entry-level' survival tactic, says Scott McKeown. (photo: Michael Amsler)

HOW DOES YOUR…: Home food production is an ‘entry-level’ survival tactic, says Scott McKeown. (photo: Michael Amsler)

But Fridley is hardly a homegrown hippie who spends his leisure time gardening. He spent 12 years consulting for the oil industry in Asia. He is now a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a fellow of the Post Carbon Institute in Sebastopol, where members discuss the problems inherent to fossil-fuel dependency.

Fridley has his doubts about renewable energies, and he has grave doubts about the future of crude oil. In fact, he believes to a certainty that society is literally running out of gas and that, perhaps within years, the trucks will stop rolling into Safeway and the only reliable food available will be that grown in
our backyards.

Fridley, like a few other thinkers, activists and pessimists, could talk all night about “peak oil.” This catch phrase describes a scenario, perhaps already unfurling, in which the easy days of oil-based society are over, a scenario in which global oil production has peaked and in which every barrel of crude oil drawn from the earth from that point forth is more difficult to extract than the barrel before it. According to peak oil theory, the time is approaching when the effort and cost of extraction will no longer be worth the oil itself, leaving us without the fuel to power our transportation, factories, farms, society and the very essence of our oil-dependent lives. Fridley believes the change will be very unpleasant for many people.

“If you are a typical American and have expectations of increasing income, cheap food, nondiscretionary spending, leisure time and vacations in Hawaii, then the change we expect soon could be what you would consider ‘doom,'” he says soberly, “because your life is going to fall apart.”

The Great Reskilling

But is it the end of the world?

Fridley and other supporters of the Transition movement don’t believe it is. First sparked in 2007 in Totnes, England, Transition was launched when one Rob Hopkins recognized that modern Western society cannot continue at its current pace of life as fast access to oil begins to dwindle. Global warming and economic meltdown are the two other principle drivers of the Transition movement, but in an ideal “Transition Town,” society would be ready for such changes.

With limited gas-powered transport or oil-based products, a Transition community’s citizens would live within cycling distance of one another in a township built upon complete self-sufficiency, with extremely localized infrastructure for agriculture, clothes making, metal working and the other basics of life which the Western world largely abandoned to factories in the late 1800s, when oil power turned life into a relatively leisurely vacation from reality.

Now, Transitionists say, it’s time to get back to work—and quick. Localized efforts have sprouted from the ground up in Santa Cruz, Cotati, Sebastopol, San Francisco and many other towns worldwide, where residents and neighbors are putting their heads together and collaborating on ways to relocalize themselves, bolster self-sufficiency and build the resilience that communities will need to absorb the shock of peak oil.

Scott McKeown is among several initiators of Transition Sebastopol. A 53-year-old event coordinator by vocation, McKeown believes that as early as 2012 the global economy could founder. “That’s when it’s really going to hit the fan,” he says. “We’re not there yet, but we will be very soon.”

McKeown founded Peak Oil Sebastopol in late 2007 as a public discussion forum for what was then becoming a popular topic of relevance among social reformers. Yet Peak Oil Sebastopol eventually proved a bit too heavy on the talking for McKeown.

“I wanted to shift from a discussion group to an action-based effort,” he explains. “Transition attracted me as a way in which we could actually begin doing something.”

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Transition Culture – Flee hydrocarbon culture

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I think the real questions here are, can enough of us flee in time and can the different technologies required to do it handle climate change. Unfortunately we shall see.

http://transitionculture.org/about/

About this site and me

robintotnesFor more about this website and what is all about take a look at the page Why Transition Culture?. This section is to tell you about myself.  It is written in the third person not due to delusions of grandeur, but so that people who need biog pieces can cut and paste it from here.

“Rob Hopkins is the co-founder of Transition Town Totnes and of the Transition Network. He has many years experience in education, teaching permaculture and natural building, and set up the first 2 year full-time permaculture course in the world, at Kinsale Further Education College in Ireland, as well as co-ordinating the first eco-village development in Ireland to be granted planning permission.

observerethicalawards2009logonewHe is author of ‘Woodlands for West Cork!’, ‘Energy Descent Pathways’ and most recently ‘The Transition Handbook: from oil dependence to local resilience’, which has been published in a number of other languages, and which was voted the 5th most popular book taken on holiday by MPs during the summer of 2008.  He publishes www.transitionculture.org, recently voted ‘the 4th best green blog in the UK’(!).

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Permaculture And Transitional Communities – What Wiki says

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Those fleeing a hydrocarbon existence use many different rationales. Like Thoreau, they want to lead a simpler life, while resisting the constant wars the US seems to be in. Like Schumacher they want to celebrate appropriate technology. Like the Amish they want to support earth conscious sustainable food production methods. What ever the reason, this is what WIKI says about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_Towns

Transition Towns

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 

Totnes, Devon: a Transition Town

Transition Towns (also known as Transition network or Transition Movement) is a brand for environmental and social movements “founded (in part) upon the principles of permaculture” [1], based originally on Bill Mollison’s seminal Permaculture, a Designers Manual published in 1988. The Transition Towns brand of permaculture uses David Holmgren’s 2003 book, Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability. [2] These techniques were included in a student project overseen by permaculture teacher Rob Hopkins at the Kinsale Further Education College in Ireland. The term transition town was coined by Louise Rooney[3] and Catherine Dunne. Following its start in Kinsale, Ireland it then spread to Totnes, England where Rob Hopkins and Naresh Giangrande developed the concept during 2005 and 2006.[4] The aim of this community project is to equip communities for the dual challenges of climate change and peak oil. The Transition Towns movement is an example of socioeconomic localisation.

Contents

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Out to weed the strawberry patch. More tomorrow.

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Protest Ameren Rate Hikes – Email the ICC and tell them to cut rates

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As I said yesterday, I went to the rate hike hearing for Ameren and it was a joke. The room was packed with suits and special interests and only three of us spoke. Residential occupants are currently paying between 13 and 12 cents per kilowatt for electricity. This is outrageous. I only found one website with a clear statement about this and it was:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=cost+of+electricity+in+illinois

There is a place where you can go to lodge a protest.

http://www.icc.illinois.gov/

The docket numbers for the electric and gas rate hikes are 11-0279 and 11-0282 respectely. Please go there and tell them that in this economy a rate CUT is the only thing that makes sense. Thanks

Oh, you type the docket number into their e-docket finder blank at the top right of their page and when the docket comes up their is a tab for comments. Fill that form out and hit submit and you are all done. Spread the word. The more people that comment the greater the impact.

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Compare Electricity Rates – Another request for links and guest post

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This is probably something like an advertising/actual content/simple search engine site. I make no claims about the sites CES links with. I got no legitimacy meter. This was not the article they wanted me to use but this one seemed a little more in line with the type of stuff I post. I would add two things to this list if you are capable of them, turn off your water heater and your air condition if it is in the summer and if if it is winter, dial back your heat dramatically.

http://compareelectricityrates.com/blog/2011/10-things-to-turn-off-before-going-on-vacation/

Attributed to:  Katherine Tworsey

Planning a vacation, time to get away from the hustle and bustle of life is fun and exciting, and if you remember to turn off these 10 things before you go on vacation, you will worry less about what’s going “on” at home and really enjoy your vacation!

  1. Lights: It might seem obvious to turn off the lights while you are away, but some people completely forget. You will save a bundle in electricity costs. Do consider, however, one or maybe two lights on a timer switch in a front room or bedroom, so it looks as if the lights are going on and off throughout the evening. Homes are less likely to be broken into if someone is home.
  2. Your coffee pot: don’t just turn off your coffee pot, and other small appliances, but unplug them completely. Many small appliances continue drawing electricity even when not in use. By unplugging them, you will be saving electricity as well as preventing a possible fire.
  3. Computer: Generally speaking, it is not good to have a computer sit idle, but when you are away from home, you must take extra care to protect your computer and files it contains. Unplug it from both the electrical service and disconnect it from the internet. Be sure to back up all your files before you leave either using an online service or external hard drive that is stored away from your computer.
  4. Wall Warts: Those little transformer boxes that charge electronic devices, cell phones, lap-top computers, etc; take a walk around your house and see how many chargers are plugged into electrical outlets with the other end open and waiting for some device to get charged up. Unplug them all before you leave!
  5. Garage door opener: Unplugging the motor of your garage door opener will ensure that no one will find a compatible opener and get your door open. Leave an extra key to the walk-in garage door with a trusted neighbor, so you won’t have any problems getting in when you get home.

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More tomorrow.

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