I use a lot of recycled plastic containers for my indoor garden. You Grow Girl advises sticking to these plastics for safety:
1 – PETE
2 – HDPE
4 – LDPE
5 – PP
and avoiding these:
3 – PVC
6 – PS
7 – PC
The numbers refer to the symbols pressed on most plastic products, indicating their makeup.
Nerve compression plus a total inability to tackle hills without getting off to push mean I never mount a bicycle unless I have to. Exercise in general is not a favourite pastime of mine. Laundry? Eh. It’s just one of those things you’ve gotta do.
Combine all three, though, and we have a multitasking device I could get behind.
Behold, the bike-powered laundry unit!
http://www.bikehacks.com/bikehacks/2012/01/green-power-bike-washing-machines.html
Food Garden International’s Roger Doiron gives an entertaining talk on how backyard gardens can help change and save the world.
A Dunkin’ Donuts in St. Petersburg, FL, has added an industrial-sized worm bin to its dumpster area, which it feeds with the waste from the coffee shop. That’s a big step up from the 3 Toronto Starbucks locations I visited this week; not a single one was aware of Grounds for the Garden. Come on, Starbucks! Get with the (corporate) program! My worms are jonesing for their caffeine fix!
http://www.ecobcil.com/blog/florida-dunkin-donuts-has-massive-solar-powered-worm-bin
Here’s an article on the founder of TerraCycle. This guy’s a personal hero of mine, as he mixes all of my favourite topics: environmentalism, entrepreneurialism, and savviness.
He learned about vermicomposting when a friend showed him the salutary effect worm castings had on pot plants, and has since built an empire based on the stuff others throw away.
TerraCycle collects organic waste to feed to their worms, whose castings and tea is sold in reused plastic bottles salvaged from the waste stream.
Szaky’s second “aha!” moment was “when we saw that the soda bottles people were discarding, or perhaps recycling, were also a perfectly good raw material. We had always been Dumpster diving for our office furniture, but that was the first time we realized that greatly expanding our Dumpster diving could fuel our production line. We had discovered that contemporary America is a vast Dumpster of industrial products that manufacturers are constantly throwing away or recycling — even when they’re in perfect condition.
One man’s trash is another man’s multi-million dollar fortune. More power to him!
http://www.princetoninfo.com/index.php?option=com_us1more&Itemid=6&key=05-13-2009%20terracycle
The world is starting to chatter about aquaponics, which is a relief to those of us who have been singing its praises for the past few years.
I first came across this gardening system a few years ago, long after I’d established a mental image of my future farm. Within five minutes of reading of it, I had not only wiped away that imaginary layout, I’d started telling my coworkers about its revolutionary nature. (As you’d expect from tech company employees, none of them seemed to grasp the excitement of it.)
With different food crises erupting globally, and an economy that has created a sinkhole in middle America, it’s no wonder those who might once have been nonplussed are sitting up to take notice. One aquaponics evangelist suggests that this system could help not only to reduce America’s “food miles” footprint, but also make the Great Plains the largest area of fish production in the country. Can you picture those factories in the Rust Belt, shuttered by the industries that have died, bursting from the inside with fish, fruit and vegetables? Brings new imagery to the terms “factory farming” and “industrial plants”, doesn’t it?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/garden/18aqua.html?pagewanted=all
One of the few things I will sorely miss when I finally leave Toronto is the marvellous Toronto Public Library. The holdings are huge, and items can be ordered online and delivered to local branches for free. Its a rare thing when the catalogue lets me down, but I went into my search for Superbia! with little hope of its availability. Imagine my surprise to have a copy delivered to me within a few days. And imagine my joy to find the book was even more inspiring than I’d anticipated.
Be careful with this book: Its enthusiasm is contagious! The authors approach a topic that is the bane of eco-warriors with a pragmatism that is sadly lacking in much of the environmental movement: While new development can be done with an eye to green building, existing suburbs are entrenched, so we might as well work with what we’ve got.
And what work can be done if we put our minds to it! The authors lay out a series of steps undertaken by a fictional neighbourhood that start with small efforts and eventually lead to an actual community. The fictional aspect does gloss over some of the real-life problems (e.g. legalities, problem neighbours, and plain old human stubbornness) that would probably add friction to a path mainly depicted here as self-lubricating, but there’s no denying it helps build excitement in the reader, and show that even small steps can lead to big strides.
The idea of community-building is intoxicating to a pragmatist such as myself. Being able to pool resources such as cars, lawnmowers, toys and tools opens up space both in one’s home and one’s wallet. Being able to pool talent opens up possibilities and creativity in one’s neighbourhood. The Utopian community depicted in the book features a fenceless backyards transformed into gardens, a shared house where rooms are let out as home offices and weekly potlucks keep the residents close, and a labour exchange so an hour of babysitting can be traded for some renovation work, web design, or whatever other goods and services can be offered.
North American suburbs have a reputation – not unfounded – for being airless, unfriendly and sterile, but the colourful, vivacious and open community depicted in the book makes me feel right at home.