Eating local, another way to help slow global warming

Vast amounts of pollution from fossil fuels are released by the transportation of such foods as Chilean grapes to Chicago, peppers from South Africa to South Dakota and tomatoes from California to New York. As oil prices rise significantly from political turmoil and war or when we gradually run out of oil, food will become more and more expensive in both dollar amount and the cost is ecological damage. Who will be willing to pay $25.00 for a bag of tomatoes?

Eating local solves much of this problem. Local foods often may not be cheaper currently, but buying local foods certainly reduces the cost of negative environmental impact that factory farming and shipping food from thousands of miles away brings. Estimates suggest that the average produce item travels 1,500 miles to get from farm to your table. Transportation’s greenhouse emissions are not factored in to the true cost of the food you eat as well as the cost of other adverse environmental impacts from factory farms.

Local foods can be fresher, more flavorful, and nutritious than can fresh foods shipped in from distant locations. Even though the food appears fresh in the supermarket – often nutrition is lessoned by the time it reaches your table. Industrial growers are often place greater concern with how well the produce can be shipped and still look good rather than how nutritious and flavorful it is.

Buying local food is increasingly becoming more popular and there are many great resources to address questions and concerns available that we will discuss. (more…)

Clothesline drying is the next big thing to help save the planet

One simple way for the average person to help lower greenhouse gas emissions and slow global warming is to hang your clothes up on a line to dry instead of using dryers. Clothes dryers account for as much as 10 percent of home-energy use in the US. Sounds simple but this issue has many complicated aspects. First of all, most people these days feel too busy to hang laundry. Only 40 or so years ago most people managed to find time to hang clothes, I suspect that as the climate changes and the energy crisis worsens we will need to rethink how we do most everything. Unlike say, installing solar panels or a wind turbine, hanging your clothes on a line is actually possible for the average person. You can do this with only a minor inconvenience – and you can proudly talk to your neighbors about why you are doing this “radical” act! Here is a very useful and thoughtful site that discusses this issue at length.

Sociological aspects like the fact the majority of women now work full-time and there is no one home during the day further complicate the issue. Also, our weekends are jammed full with a thousand chores and obligations more important. But when you think about it, with your clothes on the line you won’t be chained to your machine waiting to put in the next load. It may sound too “new-agey” but the simple act of being outside, doing something simple and stress free can help in getting in touch with nature and your spirit. There are a wide variety of types of clothesline both indoor and outdoor types. Here is one site that has an interesting range of types available.
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Hurricane CD clock from recyclingcds.com £5.99 or $11.63 US Many more amazing styles of CD clocks and be found here.

Have you a million old CDs of old software, work projects, aol disks, junk mail CDs, realtor CDs, CDs with god know what is on it? What can you do with the DVDs and CDs when you finally tackle this hidden pile of junk? You can’t just dump them all in the trash where they will last for hundreds of years slowly leeching nasty chemicals and you aren’t able to put them in with your usual recycling. So what to do?

You may not be aware but for a fee CDs and DVDs can be recycled for continued use as a CD or DVD through such places as Green Disc.com who will recycle and or reuse your computer related waste for a fee. They seem to specialize in recycling all forms of electronic media and their cases: diskettes, zip disks, CDs, DVDs, video tape, game cartridges, DAT, and virtually all other type of computer tapes. Further information can be found here.

Creative and industrious types will find wonderful new lives for their cds as lamps such as this awesome CD Lamp made by Chad shown here. Here is a site that shows exactly how to make similar CD lamps.
Here is another link that discusses a variety of ways you can reuse your CDs in creative ways – some even practical enough to actually do!

Back in 2004 a California lawmaker introduced a bill that would require companies like AOL to include a self-addressed envelope with the CD so if you didn’t want it you could just mail it back – seems like a great idea to me! Here is a c|net link to an article about this.

Solar Garden Frogs (set of 2) – $62.66 from Eco-Lights.com These frogs will watch over your garden or outdoor area, collecting power from the sun during the day and will softly glow at night. Made from cast resin, uses white LED lights, power pod design can be rotated for the best angle to get the sunlight. Unclear on the exact size but their website states they weight 2 lbs so I suspect they are somewhat large. They would look very cool beside a Koi pond, reflecting their glow in the water.