Where the hell did April go? Taxes are due tomorrow and Earth Day is soon! Let us not forget that. In fact, here are some of my eco-conscious goals and my progress (or lack thereof).
1. Bike more/drive less
I still don't have a working bike, but my insane jealousy when I see others biking will drive me to the bike store soon, I swear. It was pure torture today being inside the stupid clammy gym as I watched people bike merrily past. There I was, going nowhere, with only parked cars and bikers to look at. Sigh.
2. Start composting and/or join a community garden
I'm pretty waste conscious and I tend to be pack rat instead of throwing things away (the waste! the waste! also, what else could be done with this?!). When I do throw things away it's mostly smelly vegetable scraps. So, composting makes a lot of sense...except for that whole apartment problem. I found this article, which led me to discover that there are friendly worms that can help with apartment composting. Then I saw the picture of said worms, freaked out, and decided they would live nowhere near me. But, curbside composting is coming "soon" to St. Paul?
Oh, and community gardens...I started looking that up in January and got distracted. Probably because it was zero degrees out.
3. Not really a goal, just a general rant against number 5 plastic containers
I hate you, number 5 plastic containers. But I love you, yogurt and sour cream! And other dairy filled niceties! Also, I can't even believe that freaking COON RAPIDS now recycles number fives. This puts it ahead of every other municipality on the recycling curve, and yet it is a horribly sprawly suburb that doesn't allow pedestrians! Agh.
4. Take shorter showers
My way of trying to control this is finding a song that's approximately 5 minutes long, playing it really loudly, and then take at least two songs to shower anyway because my stupid old shower has no temperature control whatsoever.
I'll keep you updated. Must get a bike.
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5 comments:
I feel your longing for a bike -- I am eager to get one.
re: composting -- Yesterday, I just started using the countertop compost bucket I got my wife for xmas and it works wonderfully. I only started using it yesterday because that's when the snow melted enough for me to find my pile of lawn clippings/leaves. This is the one I use, and I really like it:
the stainless steel one.
also, my lil bitty town of 3000 recycles all plastics 1-7. I was shocked when we moved here, but it's so awesome. The way they pitch recycling here at our transfer station is not "let's save the earth" but "we can save tax dollars by sending less trash to the landfill, so if we recycle we can sell that and make some money" which makes people here thrilled. We drop off trash & recycling at the transfer station and then they ship it over to the other town's dump and we're charged by how much trash we ship. However, this is all covered by our town taxes so it's no cost to me. Aside from my insanely high property taxes.
but you really could try apartment composting, but worms are hard to keep going, I would think. Or just save it and check to see if a community garden (which you reallllly should look back into) will take it.
Oh my gosh, that crock is so tiny! You'll have to let me know if you have problems with fruit flies. It seems like it would be unavoidable, and I hate those things. HATE.
That recycling system sounds good...I really wish more workplaces would get into composting, because it saves them money too. And then I could just bring the stuff to work!
it looks much smaller than it really is -- it's about the size of a hotpot. It has a double-filter action in the lid, so we have had no problems yet, but I'll let you know if we do.
Composting is a fickle beast, it needs to be done just right. Next year I'll have the results of what we're doing now. The plus side is that since I'm dumping whatever produce goes bad, I'm reminded not to let that happen again.
Some places do curbside composting -- now that's crazy.
Isn't curbside composting where you stick your food scraps etc. in a biodegradable bag on the curb like you would with other recyclables?
I think so -- I think my brother-in-law's town in the San Jose area started doing it. They have something like a large plastic pitcher that they put on the curb w/the recycling, but what I'm thinking with curbside composting is what about animals? I worry about it in my backyard w/the deer, skunks, bears, and raccoons I know I have (and maybe a moose?), but they have yet to dig it up.
So far I'm having to dump the container every 2 1/2 days, this will increase once the summer is here w/more produce. yikes.
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