Virescent

Starting with seeds, I’ve grown romaine lettuce, spearmint, cilantro, chives, shelling peas, lavender, and basil to eat- then morning glories, cardinal creeper, and sweet peas to look at. In a couple weeks, I’ll inherit peppers and tomatoes (thanks, dad!). I definitely made mistakes during planting, but my sprouts have turned out to be very forgiving.

To improve in the future, I need to separate seeds when I plant them to make transplanting them less traumatic (for me, anyway), and also to have a better idea of what’s what, and what’s where. For instance, it appears that spearmint has invaded three of the pots, and there are two things growing in the lavender pot, and I have no idea which one is lavender. I’d also like to turn my garden towards more substantial food production, but I’m glad I got herbs and garnishes in now.

One happy side effect of this was getting introduced to a big, supportive group of garden bloggers. Thanks for the comments and suggestions from all of you! Typically when I wrap up a monthly goal, I only post sporadic follow-ups. Gardening being what it is, I’ll continue posting about it frequently, even though I’m shifting focus now.

In May, I’m going to practice local activism. I’ve got the Eco-Summit on Saturday, and I need to become more informed about local politics and sustainability groups, to see how and where I can get involved to advocate my cause- and what kinds of causes are good to advocate.

I’ve never been much for causes. I’m typically quite content to educate myself independently about an issue, decide my own course, and only discuss it with close friends or when somebody else brings it up. I don’t get out and try and change things much, I don’t join groups, and this blog is really the furthest I’ve gotten in trying to convince others to reexamine their own lives. See now, I don’t even talk about that here- I just offer examples of my own changes, and don’t make the leap to advocacy.

Leadership by example is well and good, but I need to start taking bigger leaps. Plus, in order to actually live more sustainably, I can’t just change the way I do small things. I need to work to change the way wasteful systems around me work. A group at MIT published a study on carbon footprints of Americans recently, and concluded that even if you’re doing all you can to reduce, you’re still, on average, emitting so much more than any other country- because of the way our lifestyles are arranged at all levels.

“There’s a certain amount you can do as an individual,” said Timothy Gutowski, the MIT professor of the mechanical engineering class who lead authored the paper, “but if you recognize this is a system-wide problem, you need system-wide attention to the problem.”

That’s going to mean cleaner power, say, solar concentrating power plants plus wind. Better transportation options need to speed to market, probably smaller electric vehicles and smarter mass transit options. Materials like cement and plastics need to be made with far less energy. Cities will have to be redesigned to reduce the need for commuting. More efficient ways of transmitting, storing and using energy at the grid and home levels need to be mainstreamed. What we eat will have to change; the challenge will be making the future food taste as good as the corn-based delicacies that populate our menus now.

Now greenhouse gases aren’t the only measure of sustainability, but they’re a good, quick reference. So if I’m gong to do this right, I need to try and change somethign else besides me, personally. Activism it is.

I’m going to start tonight by having a sit-down with my house mates about how much electricity we use. Wish me luck.

I was walking through Old Town yesterday, on the way to get my mom a fairly-traded mother’s day gift, when I saw a flyer for the Eco-City Alexandria Summit.  Well, well!  The city is working with the local campus of the Virginia Tech graduate program in Urban Planning to create a plan for future sustainable development, and that’s the grad program I’m interested in attending, so apparently the stars are aligned well lately. Except the fair trade store was closed for the evening already, so one star was AWOL.

The process has already begun the planning stages. Good summaries and some interesting documents are already posted at the website. Community leaders got together to discuss some ideas in March, and the Summit is a chance for local citizens to make commentary and add to the outline. It will be held Saturday, May 10, at TC Williams High School, from 8:30 to 2:30. Breakfast and lunch are involved, and registration is free, though they want an RSVP to eco-citysummit@alexandria.gov by next Friday or Saturday- they’ve asked for “Friday May 3″, but Saturday is May 3rd, so.

I had plans to be in a sewing class the 10th, but this is more important- especially since I fancy myself a local sustainability blogger. I’m going to have to expand “local” to actually include more than my back deck. I’m pretty out of touch with local goings-on. Apparently they’re announcing the Environmental Charter from the March Eco-City meeting at the Earth Day celebration today in Ben Brenman Park (on Duke St, across from the ugly library)? I didn’t know we had an Earth Day celebration, so I should probably pick up a local paper or read the local county website ever.

But I know now, I’m signing up today, and I’ll report back. Thus begins my descent into local activism.

(I am a little afraid of being an “activist”. Why can’t growing my own food be enough? But I know it’s not enough.)

I’ve finished my organic vegetarian dinner (don’t be impressed, though, I had a chicken sandwich at a national chain for lunch), and I found a few new colors of hydrangea and mint seeds at the Grocery tonight: good earth day.

I’m impressed with the media: they managed to be breathless about the Democratic nomination and the importance of Earth/Going Green/Climate Change simultaneously. With all the coverage today, though, the best article on the subject was published Sunday.

The NYT Magazine carried an article by Michael Pollen (author of “In Defense of Food” and “An Omnivore’s Dilemma”) on why personal sustainability matters. Sure, it’s easy to win my affection by talking about gardening and Czechoslovakian revolutionaries, but his article touches on more than that. Give it a read, if you’ve ever felt like you can’t do anything about climate change, or need a refresher in today’s sea of greenwashing, or even if you’ve got that notion that only the free market can deal with climate change effectively.  Something for everybody, and well-written, to boot.

From the article (after his request that, as a first step, people attempt to grow something edible):

“[G]rowing even a little of your own food is, as Wendell Berry pointed out 30 years ago, one of those solutions that, instead of begetting a new set of problems — the way “solutions” like ethanol or nuclear power inevitably do — actually beget other solutions, and not only of the kind that save carbon. Still more valuable are the habits of mind that growing a little of your own food can yield. You quickly learn that you need not be dependent on specialists to provide for yourself — that your body is still good for something and may actually be enlisted in its own support. If the experts are right, if both oil and time are running out, these are skills and habits of mind we’re all very soon going to need. We may also need the food.”

Also, he mentioned that Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House! Imagine that! Reagan took them right back down, which doesn’t surprise me even a tiny bit, sigh, but they were up there once, and that’s shocking. Why does that have to be shocking?

And in a quick 180, worst coverage of Earth Day goes to WorldNetDaily News. Well, “News”. Their contribution was an article about how uppity women who insist on working out of the home are one of the biggest threats to the environment out there. Maddening, if it weren’t so originally perverse and totally laughable. Found the link through Feministing, who has an excellent response.

I’m back, and I’ve got a few changes coming here for you soon.  Photo Albums!  And such!  But today, it’s Earth Day, and there’s some love to be sharing.

My plans for Earth Day were mostly to trick people into drinking some organic wine and watching The Day After Tomorrow (still the best climate change movie ever produced, ever, sorry, Gore.)  Well, some aspects of that would have involved more necessary trickery than others.  I’m having a hard time finding anyone who finds that movie to be as much of a work of genius as I do.  But given school and work, film and wine will need to happen later on.  I’ll definitly pet my sprouts, though.  That should be plenty earthy.

For a small celebration, though, I want to share a few links to blogs I’ve been reading and enjoying.

A More Perfect Market had a recent post on the problems of landholders cashing in on their forests- the ‘greenies’ and government are making it harder for them, and who’s it helping?

Bean Sprouts has a recipe for Goat Cheese and Roasted Vegetable pasta.  It’s part of her eating-vegetarian challenge.  Since goat cheese is delicious, how challenging can this be?

At Climate Progress, the talk is usually wonky and political, but for Earth Day they’ve posted a discussion of why we shouldn’t focus on saving the planet, but instead on saving ourselves (massive weather changes being way more damaging to people than the huge spinning ball of molten rock we’re allegedly concerned with).

Crunchy Chicken is doing a lot of good work, all the time, but the one that catches my eye is her series on highly attractive men on the environmental movement. This time, it’s Guillermo from LocalHarvest, a website dedicated to local farming. Good pic(k).

Eco Samurai is brewing beer at home for all the environmental, and delicious, reasons.

Eco Warrior collected some interesting ideas for making planters from things that aren’t planters.

Garden Punks has a great series of instructions and photos from their most recent garden design. Rather inspiring, but I’ll have to be content with rearranging my planters in attractive groupings for now.

No Impact Man gave a wise commentary on the recent and possibly counterproductive debates between some climate policy types (including Nordhaus and Shellenberger, who wrote “BreakThrough”) on Climate Progress.

People and Nature has collected a list of things to do outside, especially with kids. Makes me want to find a child to make go outside. In the legal-est way possible.

There’s plenty of Earth Love in these parts- well over 24 hours worth.  Fortunately, when you’re a sustainability blogger, every day is Earth Day (cheesy grin).

It’s Wednesday, and you deserve my monthly goal. While fretting on the topic, I came up with some great ones for April and later, but this month is a hard fix. First, it’s almost half over, second, I’m so busy with work and school and home that I don’t have much time to really get into anything and not make a shambles of it. But there have been signs pointing me in a happy direction, and today was the last (fortunately for my imposed deadline).

Another good friend is putting her skills to pretty use- I’ve linked her etsy store above, also- and I almost stepped on my knitting for the fourth time this week, and thus March is handcrafting month. It started out that way anyhow, at least in my dreams. I’ll be finishing the projects I’ve started, and definitely planning grand new ones. And you’ll get pictures. And I’ll get something to relax with, in between all the time I spend eating toast and being at work all the time.

Here’s the sustainability part of it, and it’s got very little to do with the environment, *gasp!*, handmade and repurposed bits aside. My life is unbalanced of late, and some knitting (and perhaps figuring out how to crochet, once and for all? and doing something with those 50 dead cds? and designing that shelf and wine-glass rack for our living room?) and quality time with my fingers busy and the rest of me relaxed is absolutely necessary. I alway have plans and project ideas in my head, and relegate them to last priority (pushy homework and greedy paychecks elbow their way to the top). There my clever plans fester and wilt my mind with their noxious fumes of wasted potential. In pursuit of world health, I will first look to my own: Sanity, meet our yarn collection! Shambles, begin.

Handmade update: Have all the necessary fabric for the Weighted Companion Cube. Gentleman Friend is rejoicing. Found an empty bobbin and the instructions for my nemesis, machine bobbin winding, and I can already smell victory (no lie like the cake, I hope.)

As of March 5th, this blog was six months old. As of September, I’ve started packing my own lunches, biking to work (when I wasn’t riding the bus), made a shopping bag and “audited” my plastic use, tried out some resolutions to make my holiday season sustainable, culled my belongings, and attempted composting a few times- all in an effort to live better, whatever that means. Biking and culling were the biggest successes. I haven’t started a good composting culture yet, and I have still have an odd relationship with plastics.

The biggest change I’ve made, though, wasn’t due to a monthly goal at all. By moving to Old Town (necessitating the culling and negating the biking to work), I’ve decreased my footprints of all kinds (except the kind that I actually walk with). It’s allowed me to sleep more, get more exercise, and use stairs at home instead of the elevator. After the flurry of move-driving, my car sat unused for almost a week: barring some specific errands and classes, it’ll stay right where it is. Since it’s been sitting, the price of gas has gone up 15 cents a gallon. The closest grocery stores- Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Giant, MOM’s, and the farmer’s market- are all well stocked with organic and/or locally grown foods. Now I have to pay utilities separately, and I can have more direct control over how much energy I use- since I’ll know how much it is. And I have three house mates who are wonderful, and wonderfully tractable, and whom I’m secretly (not very secretly) hoping to inflame.

Inflame with sustainability, that is. Anyway. A while back, I took myself to task for not having defined what sustainability means. I’ve worked on that a bit, and I’ve come up with something round about but better than nothing.

One definition of sustainable living isn’t going to pertain to everyone- and it shouldn’t. Everyone’s got a different pet “green” issue- no plastic vs no cars vs global warming doesn’t exist because it’s cold out vs no nukes, etc. I’m not a zealous environmentalist. I don’t think this problem can be solved with one fix (no oil!). In order to live sustainably, I must first and foremost be an open environmentalist, willing to consider differing points of view, and informed enough to determine which makes sense. Next, I must live practically and thoughtfully, with a view to finances and the human, environmental, and moral costs of my actions. Under this all, though, I must be able to live- work and play and learn and all that stuff. So much of sustainability is seen as limiting- we can’t do this because of those whiny polar bears, we can’t eat that because of the toxic wastes. I think the emphasis should be on how much can we do, individually and as humanity, while still living within sensible boundaries- how much can I do with how little?

The unanswered question there is, how little is little enough? I’ll leave that hanging for now. I suspect it has something to do with “little enough so that everybody can use the same amount”, but given the different ways to measure that (carbon footprint? resource use?), and that merely by living in the US I’m using way more than my fair share, it’s intractable. The answer to climate change and sustainable living is not “move to a developing nation and start subsistence farming”.

I think large environmental issues will only be solved through meaningful government and industry action, and only after we make some big technological innovations. I’m not holding my breath for government or industry help, though, and I’ll do my small part to vote with magic machines and my money (for all it’s still worth) in the meanwhile.

That’s what I’ve got. Muddled, but let me know what you think. I appreciate discourse, after all- that’s first!

Odds and Ends: I never did hang up that biodegradable plastic bag from Harris Teeter outdoors (I forget where I promised this, but I did, and someone asked a while ago, and I still haven’t done it). When I find one, I’ll hold onto it until I get some duct tape, and fulfill my promise. Also, remember that debate I was having with the conservative blogger? It’s been so long since she called environmentalists Nazis and cited the Heartland Institute as a more authoritative body than the IPCC on the question of climate change that you’ve probably forgotten- I had, hurrah for archives. I pointed out certain factual and logical inaccuracies, she responded with silence, so I’ll take the Godwin’s Law victory and let it lie.

Thanks for your time, and your comments, and I’m excited for the next parts.  Keep coming back, but, oh ho, you’ll have to, since I cleverly told you all about the last six months without revealing March’s goal!  Mua hahaha.  Ha.  I’ll let you know once I think of it, or by Wednesday.

Handmade update: Knit scarf, three inches done, one completed stripe.

There’s been a lot of ecotalk on the scourge of plastics, and that’s generally fine by me. I made my own shopping bag, I have ranted about excess plastic packaging, I’m hip. Yo.

But last week, while sick and moving, I spent an afternoon being very grateful for my drugs and my bubble wrap (I’m betting the drugs had a bit to do with all that deep contemplation). My pills were packaged in plastic, and bubble wrap is, of course, plastic, and these are wonderful things. Actually, lots of wonderful things are plastic. Plastics are durable and can be made so much stronger and lighter than most natural materials, and they’re fantastically easy to manufacture into almost anything. Plastics have made incredible engineering advances possible. Plus they’re cheap enough so that goods ordinary people could only dream of a few decades ago are readily available to the masses. These time-saving devices  allow people to raise their standards of living at no cost to resources like wood and ore. Without them, modern medicine wouldn’t exist (and they’d even have to package all those natural supplements in something else). Plastics are awesome.

So why do we hate them? They’re made of chemicals. They’re overused. Their lovely inexpensive qualities take care of that. Stuff we most noticeably don’t need is made of plastic- again, it’s the cheapest way to hand out toys with every faux-food meal, or flimsy bags with every purchase. And once they’re made, they’re here forever. Recycling them is difficult and tends to degrade their properties, and on their own they won’t break down for centuries. And when they’re not stuck in landfill properly, adorable things choke on them, or they blow around tackily. But most of that is because we use plastics poorly, not because plastics are bad.

Maybe part of it is that plastics are decidedly “unnatural”. There’s no “handmade” plastic anything- they reek of machines and mass production and technocracy. Homesteaders can swap butter recipes, but not plastic recipes. The Economist’s green.view column a few weeks ago was on how us hippie folk think that all things unnatural are bad. I thought the column was singularly poorly thought out for such a respectable publication (tone was derisive and bitter, examples chosen were blatantly skewed), but is that it? Is our visceral reaction to plastic the result of our yearnings for an ideal of naturalness?

I think it has more to do with the abuse of plastics by man, and not the plastics themselves. I’m an engineer, after all, and I like science and technology, and I appreciate that we can make it work for us, or we can abuse it. It’s just a lot easier to crusade against the definite “plastics” than against everybody’s thousand bad plastic habits- that makes ecopeople seem so judgemental and self-righteous, after all.

I’ve struggled with my plastic use in the past.  All those piles of guilt stuffed in rustling baggies. I’m still going to avoid foam plates and grocery bags (unless I need trash liners) and use aluminum foil instead of sandwich baggies- but I’ll rejoice in my plastic tupperware (or reused cream cheese tubs to prevent food and other waste!) and useful medicine containers and new, affordable latex mattress. Plastics can be part of a sustainable lifestyle, as long as we use them wisely and well.

Mine was pretty good, thanks! The Gentleman Friend and I decided to do our celebrating tomorrow- we’re cooking together.  A movie may or may not be involved. Tonight, I can get ready for my construction site inspection (architecture school field trips are sweet) and munch on the loaf of bread the GF baked me earlier this week.

In honor of both the GF and the day, here’s an article on the more sustainable flower farms in Colombia (his country of extraction, more or less). They don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day so much- instead, Feb 14th is the “International Day of Flower Workers”, since about 100,000 Colombians grow about a billion dollars worth of flowers for export every year. A new program called “Floraverde” is providing these flower farms with a chance to certify themselves in social standards for their workers and environmental standards for their growing operation- and it’s catching on. They’re still working on the whole right to organize labor thing, but over 40% of their farms are now certified with the program since 2003, or are in the process of certification.

I’m excited about the Valentine’s Day when my Gentleman Friend can buy me flowers and know that he’s buying a product that wasn’t grown with dangerous chemical pesticides, and wasn’t transported long distances to him by dirty fuels, and the proceeds of which purchase go back to be invested with the people who produced them in the first place, to help grow everybody’s economy. For now, I’m happier without them. Well, ok, sometimes they do help when he’s got some explaining to do, but still.

Let me know how sustainably yours went!

I can already feel the swell of righteous anger- I know, I know. Valentine’s Day is a dreadful prospect for everyone involved. You’re either under pressure to come up with something really special- flowers! roses! diamonds! dinner reservations! all of the above!- for your snuggly-pumpkin, or scared and wondering if your snookie-poo is coming to come through with something really special for you, or if you haven’t got a cuddle-woogums then, well, you’re cranky. About this time of year, I start hearing the anti-establishment rants from males of my aquaintance- Valentine’s Day is created by advertisers to convince women that we have to buy them things and then they get mad at us when we don’t and everything’s pink and those candy hearts are gross and I hate it and etc.

They’re right, except for the candy hearts thing. Apparently the greeting card industry has an award named for the lady who invented the Valentine’s day card. And now they’re capitalizing on haters by selling Anti-Valentine’s day cards! Genius!

Plus, all this shiny red waste. Big packages for little waxy chocolates, plastic wrap, cheaply-made toys, forests of obnoxious cards, tons and tons of dying flowers shipped all over at exorbitant prices…and all the hippies crying green ecotears. Why are we making love so unsustainable?

Some go so far as to declare their non-participation in this non-event: I will not bow to the follies of popular culture, I above the red and pink pressures. Works perfectly if you’re single, but you try explaining to your wimbly-bipple that you’re not going to be extra-sweet to him/her/it for one little day just because somebody had the gall to suggest that you do so. (Here’s a helpful tip: this will always go poorly for you. If it doesn’t go poorly for you, dump him/her/it and look for someone with a backbone.)

Me, I like Valentine’s Day. I’m looking forward to it. I think you’d like Valentine’s Day, too, if we made a few rules for it. Here’s my proposal:

1 ) No gross, over-processed red and pink-wrapped chocolates/candies. “Gift Food” is not a gift, nor is it food. Try making something actually tasty.

2 ) No stuffed animals (ok, unless it’s your best friend from forever and you compete to see who can come up with the most ridiculous one even though she always wins, even the year you found the purple snake with heart spots, because of that one vibrating pink lion…).

3 ) No store-bought cards. “I Love You” doesn’t count if it was written by a committee, mass produced, and purchased. (Try making a pop-up card. Fun, and demonstrative, and just think of all the things you can…never mind.)

4 ) Both halves of the couple must plan nice things for their hunnie-muffins.

5 ) If you do buy jewelry, don’t symbolize your love with a product of bloodshed, underpaid sweat, and intestinal delivery. Go vintage, or fair-trade, or lab-grown, or recycled, or at least certified. And similarly with flowers- why are you killing so many pretty things to tell her she’s pretty? Get her a live plant if you can (let her kill it). But really,

6 ) You don’t need to spend money at all. This is about love, and celebrating strong relationships, and taking the time to appreciate having your puddle-widgkins. So do that in a way that’s just for the two of you, and not for Hallmark/Godiva/DeBeer’s, also. Two’s company, three’s just wrong.

7 ) Call your parents and grandparents.

8 ) If you haven’t found your ookle-dumpling yet, see 7). Then don’t take it so personally (statistically you’ll find your mumbly-cupcake someday, and it’s not like angst makes you more attractive, unless you’re one of those people), take a deep breath, and go hang out with cool people and do fun things.

What do you think? A dash of anti-consumerism, a pinch of anti-advertisements, and a shot of self-confidence makes Valentine’s more sustainable, and maybe even bearable.

Two articles in two very different publications popped up in my feed yesterday, but they both called a new “trend”: People are buying less stuff. The New York Times pegs this novel plan to budget for purchases as the result of the whole subprime crisis and massive credit card debts. BusinessWeek ties it to customers shopping “greener”, then to subprime fallout, then finally to how this new thriftiness could tank the economy just when the President and Congress want to urge consumer spending to get us through the recession we may or may not be in.

A subtext in each article also pointed to fewer people trying to consume conspicuously- sales of the mid-tier luxury goods are falling,  and people say they care less about the labels on their clothes. (On a side note, I found this article on why people consume things loudly in the first place pretty fascinating.)

So that’s a thing.  Are people really buying less?  Are we buying less because we’re more concerned about the effect of our consumption on the planet?  Or are we buying less because we’re more concerned about the effect of our consumption on our pockets?  Is our economy’s burp going to propel consumers down the path to more thoughtful spending on resources?  Will any of these “trends” last past the recession?

*In solemn news anchor tone* One thing is for sure: only time will tell.