Earth Day Must Be Upon Us – Ads Say Buy Green

The Sunday paper came and my wife made a comment that you could tell it’s almost Earth Day because all the stores have their “green” sales.  To be honest – I’ve noticed this too.  She even pointed out the new Ziploc Evolve bags that use 25% less plastic (oooh, ahhhhh..ughhhh).  Sure – there is a less plastic and a 100% recycled cardboard container, but it’s still oil-based plastic and not PLA or something.) Everyone is having a eco-friendly sale.  Target is selling Loomstate organic cotton products – but only for a month. Even  Amazon.com is having an Earth Day sale. Macy’s is turning over a new leaf. Walmart is even having “Earth Month.” Of course the Disney Store is cashing in, too 8:-)

Where should my heart lie?  Is the recyclable glass half empty or half full?  Should I be happy that there are some sustainable products being marketed heavily right now or should I be a pessimist because they’re trying to capitalize off of Earth Day? The ones that piss me off are ads like Target – where they boast “in honor of earth week, our ad is made from 50% recycled fiber.” Why aren’t they printed on 100% recycled paper all the time (or even their boastful 50%)?  So they’re saving some virgin trees…for this week at least.

If you really want to honor Earth Day – try not participating in consumerism – or buy something used (novel concept).  The fact remains that we’re all consumers – so pick wisely, do a little research, and do your best not to be green washed.  If you have to buy something new, I’d rather you buy something remotely sustainable.  That’s the best advice I can give you. Consume wisely.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Reject.

Ben Folds – All You Can Eat

Easy Green: How To Make A Water Hippo

What is a water hippo, you ask? It’s a water-saving device for your toilet. I really don’t know why it’s called a water hippo, but I heard it called that once and we’re going with it. Instead of using a brick – or even finding a brick – why not use something you probably already have around the house? I’m using a 32oz yogurt container. You can use any size container that will fit in your toilet and still produce a strong enough flush. I probably wouldn’t go much over a 64oz container. Put a heavy rock at the bottom so the container doesn’t float around and interfere with the toilets internal parts.

Earth Hour Tomorrow Night – VOTE EARTH!!!

Grist Spreads The Love on Valentine’s Day

Grist.org has a brazilliant video up for Valentine’s Day. 

Before you get down and dirty, there’s something you oughta know: Sex toys can contain nasty toxic surprises. In today’s Umbra video, two lovebirds sing the praises of alternative playthings, just in time for Valentine’s Day.   Ditch your pthalate sex toy or  your blow up doll and make some eco-friendly love this year!  Go with glass, go organic (think Veggietales), go natural…

Don’t Buy Cashmere This Holiday Season

ORIGINALLY POSTED November 23, 2007

But I love the soft sweater made from those cute cuddly sheep in China. Why don’t you want me to buy cashmere? How will people know that I like to spend money? All valid questions. The problem is that there is so much demand for cashmere here in the U.S. that the land is being over-grazed. There are way too many sheep on one small portion of land in China. The landscape is becoming a dustbowl. The goats have very pointy hooves which poke holes through the salty crust releasing the finer sand beneath.

Why should you care about the dustbowls in China caused from the sheep that shed their coats to make you feel better? Because its going to affect you in the long run. Cashmere is not cotton. You can’t just plant more next year. If the goats have nothing to eat because they’ve chewed all of the prairies to a nub then we have a problem. China’s grasslands are turning in to deserts. The environmental impact, other than the goats eating so far down to the roots that the plants are damaged forever, is the creation of the dustbowls.

There is a huge increase in the number of dust storms. The dust gathers in the atmosphere mixing with the other China industrialized pollution creating huge orange clouds that are toxic. China officials warn residents not to go outside or open their windows during these times because they are so bad. The dust caused by these goats does not just stay in China, though. Its coming to a window near you.

From a Chicago Tribune article, “We had one storm in East Asia which we called the perfect dust storm,” said Barry Huebert, an oceanographer at the University of Hawaii. “There are good images of it following over the Pacific as a yellow plume. When it got to Colorado, it reduced visibility enough to make the national news. It continued east, and the last measurement was in the Canary Islands” off the west coast of Africa. ”

The reason we should care is that China has some of the dirtiest air in the world. The more it become industrialized, the worse it becomes. Also cited in the article are the statistics on the death rate in China directly related to air pollution. Roughly 300,000 people die each year in China of diseases linked to air pollution, according to a Chinese research institute.

Wow. All of this pollution for your vanity.

Source: Chicago Tribune

Carly Simon – You’re So Vain

Led Zeppelin – Kashmir

The Hidden Cost of Cashmere

Blogiversary: One Year Later

Today is the one year anniversary of the launch of SCREAM to be GREEN.  It’s the blogiversary!  Wow – what a difference one year makes.  Obama went from a Democratic contender to the President-elect (phew!).  Oil went from $90/barrel to $145/barrel and now it’s back at $61.04/barrel (boo SUVs).  The economy is in the toilet – not sure if it’s a dual-flush, though. A new green channel was launched – Planet Green – from the folks at Discovery Channel.  Al Gore is working on an update to Inconvenient Truth.  The 11th Hour came out and DiCaprio is working on 12th Hour.  Anyway…

How has this past year changed me?  I’ve always been passionate about the environment and conservation, but I’ve stepped it up to a new level.  The more you educate yourself on a topic, the more you become engrossed.  When you’re talking about the so-callled “green” world – you just keep uncovering more and more information - some good – some bad – most makes you want to change for the better.  Just pickup a Michael Pollan book and flip to any page and you’ll want to make a change in your life.  Same with Eric Schlossers book from a few years ago – Fast Food Nation.  Having two children really opens your eyes as well.  You want the best for future generations and when you can come home and put a smiling face to them each and every day it’s that much evident.  From the clothes you buy to the food you eat to the makeup you wear to the car you drive- you can make a difference in every facet of your life. 

This blog has afforded me the opportunity to not only be an observer, but a promoter.  I’m not religious, but this is my gospel, this is my passion.  I’m definitely not the most read green blogger out there, nor am I the most influential.  I do have a day job, afterall – and while I may be the green committee co-chair at my company, I’m definitely not a green collar worker.  I wish I had more time to devote to my passion.  C’est la vie, right.  I still feel like I’ve been upholding my mission all along.  My mission to Be The Mosquito.  I’m a small fish in a big sea. I still feel like this small fish is making a difference and it’s educating others just as I’m educated when I read other green bloggers.  So a big thank you to all my readers and subscribers and passers by. 

Beyond the knowledge that I’ve learned over the past year, I’ve made changes in my life as well.  Some of them are minor and some haven’t only been necessarily in the past year, but all are important steps in improving my life and the lives of my family and hopefully others. 

In the food department, we’ve tried to eat more locally and also eat more organic foods.  We had been a member of a CSA the previous season which had its plusses and minuses.  This year we decided to not only start a raised bed garden, but we agreed to spend what we would on our CSA at the various farmers markets.   Our veggie garden was a bit obsessive compulsive for us.  I’d go out there and just go over all the plants almost every night.  I was so proud of its success.  It was amazing how much food we harvested from one 4′x8′ plot.   We also had tomato plants growing beside the shed and they just thrived.  I can’t wait for next season!  Another big find for us over the past year was our new friend, “the egg guy.”  He started out as “the honey guy.”  We found him a few miles from our house.  We saw a “local honey” sign and he kept our homemade granola factory going all last winter. At one point we noticed that he had chickens.  After some coaxing, we finally had him selling us eggs.  Once it warmed up, the kids would always go out and check on the chickens and sometimes get a ride around the property on their golf cart.  We get farm-fresh eggs from chickens we visit only a couple miles away at the astonishing price of $2/dozen.  I feel spoiled.

Over the past year, I’ve made some great connections with fellow green bloggers, agencies that focus on organic and sustainable organizations, people who own their own green businesses and a myriad of others.  I’ve attended a number of gatherings such as Chicago Green Drinks, Green Festival (for the second year), Family Farmed Expo, Solar Tour, NeoCon and the Green Business Conference.  I’ve seen speakers from local farmers, community organizers, and business owners.  I’ve had the privilege of seeing nationally recognized green activists such as the ever-lovely Sara Snow, Robert F Kennedy Jr, Bryan Welch (publisher of Mother Earth News) and Chef Rick Bayless.

My family and I buy used when possible.  My wife was raised as a garage saler and her mother was too.  Stores like Once Upon A Child and the Internet groups such as Freecycle, Craigslist and eBay have been great, too.  There is no reason that young children, who go through clothing so quickly, need to buy clothing from the department store.  I’ve always been fascinated with thinking outside the box and being resourceful.  My family nickname growing up was Moe to which some friends called me MoeGuyver because I was always finding new uses for common things.  This has really carried over to my passion for the 3Rs.  One month initiative from our friends at DoTheGreenThing.org was devoted to used merchandise.

We are human and we are Americans, after all.  So of course we exercised our greenbacks out in society.  There were things that we needed to buy and there were things that wanted to buy.  Whenever possible, we vote with our dollars and buy sustainable, planet friendly merchandise.  This means I obtained my first pair of organic cotton jeans and my wife began purchasing natural, sensible cosmetics with ingredients she could actually read and understand from some online retailers.  We also made some very large purchases like our Toyota Prius.  I guess we scream liberal now – we have a Prius and a 1995 Volvo.  Don’t worry – we didn’t scrap our old car – it’s still in use, just not by us.  We sold it on Craigslist. I think a lot of people thought we were nuts for selling a minivan and buying the Prius.  I don’t regret it for a second.  I love that car.  Another large purchase happened just today.  We bought a natural latex mattress.  The wood in the boxspring sustainable and steel springs are 80% recycled material.  While I still haven’t purchased a dual-flush toilet (I drool over the Caromas all the time), I did pick myself up a toilet-tank sink from Sinkpositive.  I got mine on eBay.  I love it.  It really makes you realize how much water your toilet uses when you see it come out of the spout.  It’s great for brushing my teeth and washing my hands after use.  Why flush that perfectly good potable water down the drain?

For those of you who have been asking – yes – our worms are doing well!  There are so many of them now.  I’m thinking of buying a couple more trays for our worm factory.  We added another rain barrel this year, too.  I’ve daisy chained them together so that two fill up off of one stretch of roof.  I have 100 gallons of water collected from the roof to water the flowers and trees.  We only went dry once all summer.  I installed a retractable clothes line, too.  This has been fantastic. There is actually an ordinance against them in my neighborhood from the home owners association.  Can you believe that?  Our gas bill over the summer was drastically reduced as we rarely used the dryer.  You just feel good air drying your clothes in a nice summer breeze (trick (credit to my wife): if you hang your shirts on the line upside-down, you won’t have any marks on the shoulders).

Anyway – that’s my story for the year.  Those are just some of the ways me and my family have made changes or continued to live our green lifestyle over the past year.  Its been a wonderful experience sharing my journey with you.  I’m happy to continue to learn from all of you and in return hopefully educate some of you as well.

THANK YOU – PLEASE CONTINUE to SCREAM to be GREEN!

It’s a Bird, A Plane, A House

You may or may not have seen this.  This woman has been on a number of TV shows.  She wanted to build a house…she told her architect that it should look “feminine.”  The architect came up with the idea of using an old 747.   I guess what’s more feminine than a phallus shaped hull of an airplane?  It has that certain je ne sais quois. 

This story has been all over the place, but I still think it’s an interesting story of recycling.  There are also architects using old shipping containers.  They can be cut into a ton of different configurations and it’s almost like using prefab.  What’s old is new again.

Photo Gallery: The Garden Update

Spring kinda happened here in the Chicago burbs.  It’s supposed to be in the 70’s here this week consistently, so we’ll see.  I think it’s just going to go right into summer.  Anyway, the garden is underway.  We bought some cocoa mulch yesterday.  It’s great for veggies b/c its so fine.  It also smells great – although I really wanted a chocolate bar when I was done.  Here is a short photo gallery of our first raised bed.

 

Easy Green: Rain Barrel Time

In most parts of the country, you don’t have to worry about freezing anymore.  It’s time to break out the rain barrels!  I actually put mine out several weeks ago. There is a lot of rain this time of year and your barrels will fill up amazingly fast.  My water is just sitting there waiting for the new flowers that need some love.

Why have a rain barrel?  I have one because I wanted to build a project and I wanted to harvest rain water.  It’s not entirely because I’m cheap – part of it is definitely the standard answer – because I can.  The less water going into our storm sewers, the  better – back to the earth, baby. 

There are a few options on rain barrels – buy one or make one yourself.  It all depends on the look you’re going for.  For me, I made my own. After doing some research, I found that the best recommended barrel material is food-grade plastic.  I called up a Coca-Cola bottling plant nearby and they happily gave me as many barrles as I wanted.  I could only fit two in the car and I thought that was a good starting point.  If you really wanted them to be prettier, you could paint them with some Krylon plastic paint (it’s made for childrens outdoor plastic toys, etc) – but I can’t really recommend spray paint on a green site, right?

Last year, I only hooked up one barrel.  That seemed to be pretty sufficient for our watering needs, but since I had the other barrel just staring at me, I decided to daisy chain them together.  So right now, I have two 55gal barrels on my deck – about 2 feet above the ground with spigots coming off of them. 

Basic setup:

• Food-grade barrel
• Spigot
• Downspout attachment with screen
• Overflow pipe (important)

My Setup

• Downspout into barrel one
• Overflow pipe out of barrel one - flexible sump pump hose
• Spigot near bottom of barrel
• Barb connector near top of barrel one – just below overflow line
• Barb connector in identical spot on barrel two
• Spigot near bottom of barrel

When barrel one fills up, it spills over into barrel two.  When barrel two is full, there is no where for the water to go, so it exits from the overflow flexible hose.  The barrels are elevated about two feet which is plenty of gravity to water pretty much anything I need.

One big question everyone asks is regarding mosquitoes.  Yes, they can be an issue with an open-ended rain barrel.  You want to make sure your barrel is as tight as possible or has screen prevening mosquitoes from getting to the water in the first place.  If they can’t get in, they can’t lay eggs.  Maybe you inherited barrels that have open holes.  In this case there are a few options.  Instead of contaminating the water with some chemicals, try adding a little veggie oil. The oil will create a barrier at the top of the water and not let the eggs break through.  Another option is adding some cider vinegar to the water.  This will kill anything that has hatched and deter moquitoes from visiting to lay more eggs.

Easy Green: Air Your Clean Laundry

If you think about clothes lines and drying your laundry in the great outdoors here in the U.S., you probably think about the Leave It To Beaver days.  The good old days.  In fact, with suburban sprawl and the need to look “pretty,” many suburban housing associations actually ban clothes lines.  Modern clothes dryers may seem so easy, but there is something special about putting sheets on your bed that were dried in the great outdoors.  It’s that certain je ne sais quoi. 

Technically, I’m not even supposed to have anything up in my backyard.  It’s ridiculously nuts.  Sure, I don’t necessarily want to see the neighbor’s naughty unmentionables flapping in the wind, but it’s only clothing.  I know this is an odd topic in the middle of a cold Chicago winter.  If I put any wet laundry out right now, I’d have a stiff, frozen piece of cloth.  So we just hang some of it in the basement.  Of course I was watching one of my favorite television channels, Current TV.  They recently had a pod called “Dirty Laundry” done by an American living in Spain.  He talks of how quaint and beautiful it is to see everyone’s laundry.  People don’t use dryers like they do here.  I can’t remember the last time I saw laundry hanging in someone’s yard (besides my own) in the five years. 

Anyway – my point is – if you can, air dry your laundry.  I really would like to expand our operations this year and get a better setup to hang more laundry.  I know that I’m probably not supposed to, but until someone stops us, we’ll push the envelope.  How ludicris is it that you can’t do something so simple that saves a ton of energy?  It’s frustrating.

Enjoy the pod!