I’ve been slammed this past week orchestrating our office move. So, as you can tell, there have been a lack of posts. I have a couple minutes of relax time, so I just went to see Katie’s blog at Garden Punks. She posted this video - an ad for Discovery Channel. Yes, I’m stealing from Katie - but it’s a cool video so I’m posting it, too 
How did I spend the actual Earth Day, April 22? At work, of course. I wish I could tell you that I attended some rally or something. I fed my worms at my desk an apple core - that should keep them happy for a while. How did I spend my Earth Day evening? I attended Chicago Green Drinks with well over 100 other folks. It was standing room only tonight. Let’s just put it this way, if the speaker had pyrotechnics and the place caught on fire - my charred corpse would still be there (with a Fat Tire beer in hand).
Tonight was a special Green Drinks and one that I have been looking forward to for a long time. I kinda felt bad going without my wife, but she was unable to attend because we didn’t have a babysitter and the event is all the way in the city and I was already there for work. Why have I been looking forward to this one? Sadhu Johnston was speaking. He is the Deputy Mayor of Chicago and the first Chief Environmental Officer for the City of Chicago.
This is the third time I’ve seen Sadhu speak in person. The first was at the Green Festival last year. I’ve also seen him on Sara Snow’s show on Discovery Health. The topic for the evening was the “state of the environment” for the City. What have they been working on, what’s coming up, etc. So let’s get in to the meat of the presentation.
The City of Chicago announced today a program to start collecting and recycling pharmaceuticals. Currently, since pharmas are controlled substances, they have to be collected in a controlled environment. I can just imagine a drop-box in the middle of the city and homeless folks walking around with issues from the little blue pills they took. Yes - I just painted that picture in your head. So to get the party started, the collections will be held at police stations throughout the city. There haven’t been any major retailers who have agreed to collect these items - meaning Walgreens, CVS, etc.
Energy - On Saturday, you may recall from my posts that we attended what the city is calling “mega events.” These are large scale household recycling events. More than 3,500 people showed up. That’s insane - but so great!
Sadhu also reported that the City is getting 20% of its power from green sources. On top of that, they have a proposal out for a 1megawatt solar installation at a city pumping station.
Climate Change - 70% of Chicago’s energy spent is on buildings. 20% is on mobile (buses, cars, etc). They hope to reduce these emissions 80% by 2050. That’s an enormous undertaking and is going to take a lot of little steps.
There is a program underway to help retrofit older buildings. Many new buildings are already being LEED certified and building green. You can get expedited permits if you build within sustainable standards. The Merchandise Mart is one of the first old buildings to sign on. If you’re not from here, the Merchandise Mart is so large that it has its own zip code. They have realized a 12% reduction in energy which is amounting to approx. $12 million in savings. If you don’t think the little things matter - listen to this. They found that something as simple as cleaning their dust mop heads has saved them time, energy, and man power. A clean mop works better and they don’t have to mop as often.
The last climate change intiative that Sadhu spoke of is called “transit oriented development.” This is simply building housing and communities around transportation nodes.
There were more facts and figures and Q&A. Many people are concerned over residential recycling in the city. First off, the blue bag program doesn’t work. Everyone is aware of that. There is a bin system that is being rolled out, but it’s slow going due to infrastructure and just plain logistics. Residents can get a grant of $75/year to help offset the cost of hiring a private company to haul your recycling waste. If you live in an apartment building, this can make it very affordable and thus reduce your garbage going out to the curb.
Overall, I was happy that I attended the event. I always enjoy Green Drinks and it’s enlightening to go and see so many people show up. You really feel part of a community and know that Chicago is serious about the environment. We’re one of the greenest cities in the country and getting better all the time. Going to the event also affords me the opportunity to read and blog on the train while going home (like right now).
Well, I guess I can’t say that I am participating in Crunchy Chicken’s Buy Nothing Challenge for April. It’s not like we’re out buying willy-nilly. We really don’t just go out shopping and buy things on a whim. Everything is pretty calculated. I can tell you that I spent a good $700 on Saturday. I can’t tell you the last time we spent that much in a day on anything - probably when we had to put new carpet in our basement last fall.
The first item was a backup sump pump - nothing sexy, but needed. If you can’t guess, our basement flooded last fall and that’s the reason we had to replace the carpet. So I figured it was time to buy a backup pump. The second item was a yard of dirt/mulch combo for our new veggie garden. Now, on to the sexy purchase.
Goodbye gray skies, hello blue (yes, that’s from Happy Days for those of you keeping score). If you read my post on Saturday, you’d have read about how we took our gas-powered mower to a recycling event in Chicago. In return for the mower, they gave us a rebate of $100 towards the purchase of a reel-mower or a rechargeable/electric mower. That really softened the blow as these rechargeable mowers aren’t cheap. Another added bonus was that I didn’t have to try and sell my mower - I got $100 for it with no questions asked. Beautiful.
I knew exactly which mower I wanted to buy. So I convinced my wife that I should to go the local home improvement store for more than just the mower reason. I couldn’t wait any longer - the excitement of buying the new mower was killing me. Finally, I showed up to the store and the exact mower I wanted was being wheeled to someone’s car. I crossed my fingers and went in. Phew, there were two more left. I think I heard bells ring and there was a glowing halo around the prized beauty. Even better, when I walked up to it, the thing was on sale! Alas, we are the proud parents of a brand spanking new Remington Power Mower.
I’ve researched the various gas-alternative mower options available to me in the past, so I had some good ideas as to what I wanted. My yard is too large for a reel-mower. It is also too large for me to hassle with a corded mower all the time. So that narrowed my search down to rechargeable mowers. I had seen the Neuton mower and someone recommended it to me. I liked the fact that you could just drop in a fresh battery if you ran out of juice. I didn’t like that it was only a 14″ cutting width (they now have a newer one with a 19″ width). We happened to see an infomercial for the Remington Power Mower. So we looked into it. It had the drop-in battery option like the Neuton and had a 17″ width. Our old mower was 22″, so this is still a big step down in that department. The drop-in battery was a big selling point for us. Something the Remington Power Mower has that the Neuton is lacking is the corded option. If I want more power or don’t have a spare battery, I can plug it in like a corded mower and continue to cut the grass. It has a nice cord management feature to keep the extention cord out of the way, too. Oh - did I mention it’s about $0.10/charge. Remington has a full demo of their cordless Power Mower.
I almost forgot to tell you how quiet this thing is. Normally, we can hear someone mowing their lawn about 3 blocks away. My wife was in the back yard and couldn’t hear me mowing in the front. Rock star!
Now for some lawn mowing facts:
Source: People Powered Machines
Happy Days Theme
Our Earth Day weekend continued today. Instead of attending any events, we spent most of the day at home. It was over 70°F - which is amazing since it hasn’t been that warm since last October. So lets get the day started.
First things first. We had to have some breakfast. Bacon and farm-fresh eggs - perfect…except that we were getting low on eggs. After breakfast, I went outside to check out the back 40 because we had a day of yard work planned. Yesterday, we ordered a mix of a half-yard of top soil and a half-yard of mushroom compost. Luckily for us, they delivered on Sunday. I was outside checking things out and I saw the truck come down the street. For whatever reason, there is a house on the corner of a court in eyesight from our house that has the same house number. So I sprinted down there and re-routed him to our house.
A few weeks ago, I built a 4′x8′x12″ box for a raised bed. Finally, we can fill it up to get ready for veggie season. Instead of tearing the grass out, I made a “lasagna garden.” A lasagna garden is when you take newspaper and cover the ground like you’re making lasagna - put the paper down overlapping and wet it down. I did the math, thanks to some calculator via a Google search, and the box I made would hold almost exactly one yard of dirt.
Before we really got started moving all of that dirt to the back yard, we decided to visit our “egg guy.” We found someone with local honey a few miles from our house. One day we were picking up honey and noticed a stack of eggs (it was winter, so the chickens weren’t out). So now we have our egg guy. We pick-up about two-dozen eggs/week. The best part - they only charge us $2/dozen. Today we went over and they only had the eggs from this morning which weren’t washed yet. We took them unwashed and will take care of that ourselves. They also spun out some more honey for us as we were out. The kids got to feed the chickens - so they got a kick out of that.
Anyway - the rest of the day consisted of moving a yard of dirt to our pretty little box. We also did a lot of general yard work. Then, as a Dunkin Donuts coffee lover, I rode my bike to pick up a nice iced coffee afer a long day of work. The weekend is over and it was a reminder that earth day is everyday.
For all intent and purpose, Earth Day is celebrated this weekend since April 22 is a weekday. On Tuesday, April 22, I plan on going to Green Drinks. This month’s speaker is Sadhu Johnston, the Deputy Mayor of Chicago and also Chicago city chief of the Department of Environment. I’ll report back on Wednesday on that front.
Today started out well. We were concerned that our Saturday would be filled with rain. I am assistant coach of my daughter’s first grade soccer team and we had a game at 9am. We were lucky for a couple reasons - 1. the game fields are in our neighborhood and we walked there - and 2. the rain held off until about 20min after the game ended. I know you’re sitting on the edge of your seat wondering - yes, they won handily - 9-2. I think our key to victory was that we teach our kids position - and they listened - whereas the other teams still swarm.
Our Earth Day Saturday went as planned. The soccer game was great and it was nice that it was first thing in the morning. The next event was to load our car up with household hazardous waste and drive to the city for a recycling event. The in-laws brought over some old paint and batteries for us to recycle as well. We got to the event and had to get in this long line of cars. We thought that was a good sign. People are actually participating - in droves! There were various drop-off points throughout a large parking lot for the different types of recycling. In addition to recycling, they were offering rain barrels and compost bins for sale to residents of the City of Chicago (which we are not), a free CFL and a free Sigg-like water bottle. Here’s what they were accepting for recycling:
Personally, we dropped off two gas cans. They were offering environmentally-friendly replacements in exchange for your old one (but they were out when we got there). We dropped off around 10 gallons of paint if you add up the old gallons, quarts, and pints. We inherited a lot of old paint with our house when we moved here in 2001. We took all of our #5 and #7 plastics that we’ve been saving because they don’t allow us to put them in curbside recycling - that was a relief to finally get rid of that stuff - we had a lot. It was also nice to get rid of all of our old batteries, too.
Now, here’s the real reason we went to the event. We were kinda getting paid to drive to the city to participate. If you brought your old gas-powered lawn mower and gave it to the city, they gave you a certificate for $100 towards the purchase of a human or electric lawn mower. We were pretty excited. I didn’t even have to try to sell my mower on Craigslist or something - I just got a $100 for it. Now we have 45 days to buy a new mower and turn in the receipt and proof-of-purchase and I get my cash. The mower I want is pretty expensive, so getting $100 off is awesome! They even gave me a coupon code from Neuton in which they’ll give you a $100 off - so it’s essentially $200 off a Neuton mower. Too bad that’s not the one I’m buying… STAY TUNED for that post
Earth Day Saturday, Part 2
After the previous event, we headed back to the burbs since the rain had subsided. There is a great state park in our town that was having an Earth Day event from 12-4pm. We arrived there around 2pm. There were all kinds of booths and events happening. It was a real family atmosphere. The kids got to make kites and fly them out on the nature path. They also got to see a wolf and pet a tame skunk. There was a blacksmith there and various “settlers” showing off how they used to live years ago. I saw one guy make fire by bow drilling - I want to learn that. We skipped the face painting, but stopped at the Home Depot section. They gave the kids each a wooden bird house kit that we can make at home.
Overall, it was a really great day. I hope tomorrow - which is supposed to be sunny - is as productive, educational, and fun for all of us. Happy Earth Weekend, everyone!
“President” Bush called to stop the growth of greenhouse gasses (GHGs) by 2025. Ummm…yes, you read that correctly. He wants to stop the growth of GHGs in the next 17 years. In the mean time, the rate can continue to increase. According to The Chicago Tribune, the US DOE’s calculations say that GHGs will rise 10% by 2025.
Mr Bush also stated, “In 2009 alone, the government and the private sector plan to dedicate nearly a billion dollars to clean coal research and development. “ Clean coal. Sure. I know about FutureGen. It got shutdown before it started - probably because Texas didn’t win. Coal is still a fossil fuel - referred to as dinosaur juice.
“There is a wrong way and a right way to approach reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” Bush said. Then the out-of-touch “President” told us that we need to increase ethanol and bio-fuel production.
“If this is President Bush’s idea of 20/20 vision he needs to get his eyes checked,” said Sen. John Kerry, calling the new White House climate initiative “late, insufficient and insincere.” [from Trib]
To me…it just seems like he’s passing the buck to the next president.
Source: Chicago Tribune, White House
America’s largest Earth Day celebration (so they say) is taking place in cities throughout the country once again this year. The Green Apple Festival is a small music fest held in 8 cities on April 18-20. The way that most of them works is that there are bands at small venues on Friday and Saturday with a large free concert on Sunday, April 20. You’ll notice that there are a lot of jam bands - so if that’s your scene - check it out.
The Green Apple Festival is produced with a minimal carbon footprint. They have a goal of zero waste and are as paperless as possible. Some other initiatives are: use of bio-diesel generators, organic cotton staff shirts, organic food, and encouraging patrons to take public transportation to the events. They are also working with NativeEnergy to offset their carbon emissions.
Al Gore spoke at the TED Conference in February. His 20min presentation plus 10min of Q&A was fascinating. I kept meaning to watch a couple minutes and to watch it later with my wife. Thirty minutes later after it was done I had to start it over again.
He started the presentation by explaining how he’s given the “Inconvenient Truth” presentation over 2,000 times. This was the first time ever delivering this new presentation. You’d have never known it, though. It was filled with interesting graphics and even some video clips.
As with Inconvenient Truth, there are riveting statistics and images. One of them is an image of the polar ice cap in 1980, then the same picture in 2007. Scary stuff! Another great segment is the number of questions asked during presidential debates by each news outlet and how many of them were on climate change. I hate to ruin it for you, but for the hundreds of questions by most news outlets - 2 were about global warming (on average per outlet).
Al Gore is also working on a new book. It’s titled The Path To Survival. When we talked about it in February, the last date we saw was a release date of April 22, Earth Day. It looks like that has been postponed until 2009. Oh well…
I want to thank La Marguerite for bringing this new presentation to my attention.
Now take the 30min - sit back and relax - and listen (and watch) Al Gore’s new presentation.
1-800-GOT-JUNK is holding nationwide events on Saturday, April 19th for Earth Day to collect and recycle e-waste. ” 1-800-GOT-JUNK? is committed to keeping communities clean, and hazardous junk out of our landfills. We will be out in numerous communities across North America offering free e-waste collection.* We have teamed up with various electronic waste recyclers and together will properly collect and recycle thousands of pounds of e-waste on this one day.” They charge a nominal amount for disposal of TVs and monitors in some locations.
In Chicago, you can take your computers to the Goose Island Household Chemical and Computer Recycling Center for recycling year-round. They also take televisions and cell phones (and of course, household chemicals like paint).
Many Goodwill stores will accept computers free of charge where they will recycle what they cannot sell.
Some Catridge World stores will accept e-waste free of charge. Call the store first.
Dell and Apple will recycle anything they make. Apple will also take cell phones for recycling free of charge.
Still not sure where to dispose of something? Check out Earth 911.
Source: 1-800-GOT-JUNK
