Good being green

So this post is provided by me a bit late, as my friends at the Nevada Conservation League (not local, obviously, but a really great blog), posted that NYTimes wrote on Frito-Lay going “green”.  I felt I had to respond, due to my previous post on their atrocious packaging habits.

The articles states:

Its goal is to take the Casa Grande plant off the power grid, or nearly so, and run it almost entirely on renewable fuels and recycled water. Net zero, as the concept is called, has the backing of the highest levels of corporate executives at PepsiCo, the parent company of Frito-Lay.

The article also comments on Toyota and Texas Instruments being among the gigundo corporations heading toward environmentally friendly manufacturing.

You know what would be even better?  If Frito-Lay made their chip containers out of potato starch… and thus fully biodegradable.

Occasionally you’ll see me put “green” in quotation marks.  I’m not trying to mock anything, but the term “green” is actually one giant ameoba of meaning, miscontrued meaning, and abused connotation leading to economic adulteration. 

I use “green” as describing a collective effort, by an individual or a community, to introduce non-toxic and sustainable ways of living, eating, cleaning and travelling ~ as well as to reduce the amount of our own toxic consumerism (a later post) and trash we “throw away” (a later post).

Basically, what I want you to understand is that as my blog grows, the things I post are the things that I personally believe are steps toward living a life that is more sustainable, healthy and practical ~ for the life that you hold within your body and soul… for the life of an Earth that is older than we can really grasp that we damage by using “convenience” and “accepted” as an excuse to continue the habits we (individuals) currently foster.

There you go.  So if I sound preachy or rambly, or if you don’t understand how a certain post fits in, comment on it or drop me a line.  We’ll chat.

I’m just letting you know I feel like that post relates to living a better life.  The life I want to live in a world I can feel good living in.

BTW, Marc’s birthday (Marc is my Beau, in case you had not latched on yet) was a while back, but look at how I “greened” up the celebration with a from-scratch cake and icing (besides the unbleached and organic ingredients).

I am SO bummed (kinda).  The Triangle Vegetarian Society held a vegetarian (vegan, actually) feast for a load of registered people yesterday.  The crowd was a sellout with more than 30 others on the waitlist! 

Dilip, the president of TVS, said on his blog

By the way, this afternoon we sold out of our Thanksgiving feast with over 500 attendees. It looks like we’ll again be the country’s largest vegetarian Thanksgiving; we have attendees coming from at least 42 cities in 7 states.

I only heard about it the day before Thanksgiving, so I instead spent T-Day alone at my apartment, fixing a tiny version of a wheatloaf aka, a Celebration Roast.  It’s OK.  The stuffing is EXCELLENT, as it’s all squash and wheat and herbs.  Yum.

Back to the real Veg Feast by the Triangle Veg Society though.  Wowsa… Meat-eater or not, unless you just completely do not like anything except meat (and I do know some of you only like your meat and potatoes), check out their menu and tell me your mouth doesn’t start to water:

Fall Antipasto Buffet Table

• wheatberry-wild rice salad with lavender-blueberry vinaigrette
• lentil-brown/wild rice cakes with lemon tahini
• cardamom pickled beets
• fall lettuces with pumpkin seed-cider dressing
• raw vegetables
• breads, crustinis, and pita with Egyptian red lentil and artichoke-spinach hummuses, baba ganouj, and Brussels sprout “pâté”
• marinated olives, spiced pecans, and roasted chestnuts

 Main Courses

• lime-marinated seared seitan with peppercorns and fig glaze (the “star” of last year’s menu)
• roasted garlic olive oil mashed potatoes with chives, mushroom gravy, apple-pecan stuffing, and fresh raspberry-cranberry relish
• Dilip’s macadamia nut blackened Cajun tempeh
• Spanish vegetable paella
• Shepherd’s Pie with wheat gluten, roasted root vegetables, and mushrooms, with a potato crust
• braised sweet potatoes with leeks and vegan maple “butter” chutney
• roasted green beans with pesto alla Trapanese (almond and tomato pressed sauce)
• grilled baby artichokes with rosemary
• fall squashes cubed and roasted with yellow beet chunks, cranberry, chestnuts, and dill weed
• oyster mushroom croquettes
• smoked eggplant stuffed with carmelized onions and yellow lentils
• hominy succotash
• apple jicama tabouleh (raw dish)
• Carpaccio vegetale, which will feature very thinly sliced vegetables as a raw “pasta” (raw dish)
• carrot-herb velouté (thickened soup)
• Ligurian medallion pasta with marinara sauce and, on the side, walnut vegan “Parmesan cheese”
• porcini-lentil cannelloni
• country cornbread

Desserts

• fresh seasonal fruits
• phyllo cookies
• pumpkin pie with pomegranate glaze
• cinnamon currant apple pie
• rhubarb-berry crisp

Drinks

• Cider
• Cranberry juice
• Herbal tea
• Shade-grown coffee

All of that, with no meat, no animal fats, no creams and cheeses, no egg and no refined sugars or flours. 

Their site says about the event:

The Triangle Vegetarian Society (TVS) will have its annual Thanksgiving feast and raffleat one of Dilip’s favorite Triangle restaurants, Cafe Parizäde in Durham. Parizäde is one of the Triangle’s finest restaurants with a gourmet flair for fresh ingredients with Mediterranean influences, and this will be TVS’ ninth consecutive Thanksgiving there (and 14th annual Thanksgiving Feast at an area restaurant). We believe that for the fourth year in a row, we will host the country’s largest vegetarian Thanksgiving.

Hello?!  That’s where I should have been!

Eureka!  I guess I’ll know to sign up if I’m alone again next Thanksgiving! 

I just thought I would share a forum post I found from a “tween” (someone between the ages of 9-12… not wanting to be called a child, not old enough to be a teen) on 100 ways to save the planet.

Lilytheyellowluver breaks up her tips by categories:  home, office, yard, air, water and trash.

I think every generation has said they fear the future because of the actions of today’s youth. 

While a lot that is happening would prove to be worthy of concern for previous generations, always remember that the current youth have got inspirational minds and innovative attitudes as well… (and let us not forget, all the previous generations have also had their fill of social downfalls and attrocities, so we should focus on the progress each generation makes instead).

Browse her list and try three this week.  If we each did that, we could make a huge difference together.

What will we and the next generations (like my friend and her (now-born) baby, shown above) do to live in a healthy world?

Don’t think you can throw that phonebook curbside!  It will NOT get picked up because the poor quality paper makes it impossible to recycle as new paper.

Instead, your phonebook will become insulation materials.  Hey, better that than having our hundreds of thousands of phonebooks in Raleigh (and the Triangle at large) act as anchors at the already filling dump.

I was saddened yesterday when I drove to Jaycee Park on Wade Ave to discover they no longer have phonebook bins (it wasn’t a wasted trip ~ I had paperboard galore to recycle as well, plus groceries from Wholefoods). 

After a bit of digging on the WakeGOV website, I found NOTHING for currently recycling your phonebooks except that the North Wake Landfill and South Wake Landfill both have recycling drop-offs also.  The rest of the locations listed are out-of-date as of MAY 2007!  What?!

Does that mean I have to make a special 30 minute drive to the nearest landfill or cart three phonebooks in my floorboard for the next few months?!  Preposterous!

I’m glad I spend time in Durham.  At least Durham has phonebook drop-off locations!

Recycle recycle recycle those old phonebooks.

Think about if we didn’t recycle them… I bet those alone could cover the landfill!

Durham sent out a press release on where you can recycle your phonebooks.

******************

CITY OF DURHAM

Office of Public Affairs

101 City Hall Plaza

Durham, NC 27701

News Release

For Details, Contact:

Amy C. Blalock

Senior Public Affairs Specialist

(919) 560-4123 x 253

(919) 475-7735 (cell)

<mailto:Amy.Blalock@durhamnc.gov> Amy.Blalock@durhamnc.gov

For Immediate Release: November 14, 2007

City of Durham Encourages Residents to Recycle Phone Directories

Durham, N.C. - Durham residents will soon begin receiving new telephone
directories and this year, instead of throwing away old directories in the
household trash, the City of Durham wants to remind residents to recycle
them in their curbside recycling bin instead.

According to Josephine Valencia, waste disposal manager for the City’s
Department of Solid Waste Management, tons of old phone directories are
thrown away each year instead of recycled. “According to the Environmental
Protection Agency’s 2005 estimate, 660,000 tons of telephone directories are
distributed each year in this country, but only about 18 percent of them are
ever recycled,” Valencia said. “We want our residents to remember that old
or unwanted directories are easy to recycle in Durham and can be placed
year-round into either their curbside recycling bin or brought to one of
City’s recycling drop-off centers.”

Valencia advises residents to remove any plastic bags, magnets or other
attachments to their directories before recycling. In addition to curbside
recycling, residents can visit one of the City’s drop-off centers listed
below to place their old directories into the mixed paper containers.

City of Durham Drop-Off Centers:

* Open 24-hours-a-day unless otherwise noted.

. Festival Shopping Center, 3457 Hillsborough Road

. Heritage Square Shopping Center, 401 East Lakewood Avenue

. Northgate Mall, 1058 West Club Boulevard

. Oxford Commons Shopping Center, 3500 North Roxboro Road

. TFC Recycling, 1017 South Hoover Road

. The Village Shopping Center, 1100 North Miami Boulevard

. Waste Disposal & Recycling Center, 2115 East Club Boulevard (*
Monday - Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Saturday from 7:30 a.m. to
12 p.m.)

For more information about curbside recycling, visit the City’s Web site at
www.durhamnc.gov/departments/solid or contact Valencia at (919) 560-4186,
extension 253 or via e-mail at Josephine.Valencia@durhamnc.gov.

**********************************

BTW, I recycle mine here in Raleigh at the Jaycee Park on Wade Avenue, between Wholefoods and Cameron Village.

Anyone know of where else they can find legit phonebook recycling?

To go along with the yuck and lack of bicycle friendly roads here in the Triangle, Phillip recently blogged about the concrete islands and general attitude during critical mass and biking in Durham.  This post really shows a more accurate perspective and testimony to my earlier post on bicycling in the Triangle.

Join Phillip in Durham’s Critical Mass~

By the way, did you know NBC 17’s own Donald Jones is quite the cyclist?  Check out Donald’s blog about his passion for the road if you dig cycling too.

Paul Joseph Watson says that by not saving the bees more quickly, we are headed toward full blown Ecological Apocalypse.  In fact, Watson says humanity will perish much faster from the demise of the honeybee than from the much-hyped and documentarized man-made global warming.

Who am I to say he’s wrong?  With CCD claiming bees to the extent that it is, greenery may become a thing of the past within our lifetime… meaning the end of all life essentially.

But also, who’s to say this isn’t another distorted scenario?  I frankly don’t know, but I can say that most people I know are sick of reacting to fear-mongering in media.

Another argument I’m hearing: “organic bees” are the answer.  From what I gathered, “organic bees” means they themselves are not sprayed with pesticide (varroa mites), given antibiotics or fed synthetic sugars and pollens. 

Kudos to farmers relying on bees to do what they do best and how they do it best.  Just like factory farming, by pushing the limits of nature, we only destroy that nature in time ~ but they try anyhow because they seek that mythological money tree.

With this, though, I have a warning regarding economic adulteration.  Don’t fall for “organic honey”.  Honeybees travel for miles and miles in the course of a day, grabbing pollen and nectar to produce their honey and maintain their hive.  The odds of a farmer being able to guarantee and prove that those bees visited only organic plants… slim. 

Also beware of “natural” or “raw” honey.  I mean, if it cost the same as another local honey not using those words, whatever, but all honey is “natural” and most fall into the category of “raw”.  A number of groups use these hollow buzzwords, however, to jack the price up 50% or more.  I’ll get more into all of that later, so I digress.  Just don’t fall victim. 

Back to my point, we all seem to get too quickly hung on one aspect of a situation (one certain reason that in honesty is only a possibility, or the possible result to a possible extreme).  And usually, that situation is a very sticky complex situation… 

Overall I have to say, Watson is right.  CCD needs a solution, and in a hurry. 

Perhaps the only time we have, however, should be spent making changes to see if they work rather than continuing the parasite prevention, antibiotic drugging and corn syrup feeding for the bees.

Back to basics… that’s food for thought.

Have you heard of “Raleigh 2030“?  Thanks to Sue’s recent post, I learned that the City of Raleigh has *just* started a 24-month period to seriously revaluate it’s Comprehensive Plan, first created in 1989, and that you can have a part in what Raleigh could be in the year 2030.

Needless to say, Raleigh is one of many cities across the state to experience an unexpected boom in growth since 1989.  Thank goodness for that the City wants to update and revision Raleigh’s future.

THIS WEEK the City is having its first three public input revisioning meetings (according to their site, there will be nine public meetings total).  It could be great to attend to take in what’s said if not to contribute yourself.  I’m curious what will be said about corporate environmental responsibility expectations as well as the demand to create and maintain more greenways, sidewalks, transportation alternatives, etc.

You must register to attend though… so get registering and I hope to meet you there.

In a  progressive city, like those here in the Triangle, Julia Vail points out how interesting it is that the rickety old bicycle exists as the primary choice of fuel-friendly transportation for the area progressives (imagine the cats at the coffeehouse who work for IBM, SAS and Lulu, text-messenging and carrying messenger bags, laptops and ipods).  Mike Dayton even shows all that you can enjoy while riding in the area.

I see a decent number of cyclers in Raleigh, and even more in Durham, but we’re no Boulder, CO.  Just take a look at the use my own bike gets (though I’ve never been good at changing gears).

The Triangle is so spread out, it sounds ludicrous to many of us to bike to work and back (much less walk).  Then again, I had a great chemistry professor as NCSU, Dr. Sandberg, who I believe biked to work every day from somewhere crazy-far-away like Chapel Hill.

Biking is great for the environment and rockstar for your health (and body), so why not?

A big reason is because the Triangle is NOT bicycle friendly.  Road rage prevails, cyclers get yelled and honked at, and very few roads exist here with actual bicycle lanes. 

Worse yet, as for the roads that have bicycle lanes, I usually see jerks in cars use the bicycle lane for passing (for the record, yes I’m scolding you, but if you’re on a two-lane road and the guy in front of you needs to turn left, you CANNOT pass on the right or through a bike lane.  That’s called ILLEGAL, not to mention DANGEROUS for anyone not in a car).

Does anyone know of progressive strides being made in favor or bicycle and foot traffic, or is business our primary area of progress?  Let me know of any great pockets of bicycle/foot friendly traffic in the Triangle.