Green Festival 2011

Yesterday I attended the Green Festival in Chicago at McCormick Place. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I was very excited! The festival took place on Saturday May 14th and Sunday May 15th, but I only went on Sunday. There were stages where people were giving talks, a music stage, an organic wine/beer garden, renewable energy booths, fair trade booths, organic food booths and so much more! I was a little overwhelmed at first, but we made our rounds, I snapped some photos and grabbed a bunch of pamphlets. I'll post some pictures here and talk about what I saw and also what I bought.

Environmental Enlightenment #12 (Recycle Old Shoes)

When it comes time to get rid of something used/old I am trying my hardest not to throw it away. I've been doing a lot of research on how to recycle things that I never knew could be recycled! Earlier this week the boyfriend had some old gym shoes to get rid of and my first thought was to donate them to charity. However, they were unwearable at this point (falling apart and too abused to be useful to anyone else's feet). As far as I knew there weren't any shoe recycling programs, but I decided to do a quick Google search to double check. To my surprise there is a way to recycle old gym shoes! Nike (and their sister company Converse) has a re-use a shoe program. Every part of the shoe is used. The rubber from the out-sole is used to make running tracks; the fabric from the upper-sole is used to make padding for basketball courts; and the foam from the mid-sole is used to make the springy surface of tennis courts. The materials are passed through grinders to make the raw material which is then used for the previous mentioned purposes. Yesterday I found the nearest drop-off location and took the old gym shoes into Nike to be recycled.

Renewable Energy Tour

Saturday, April 2, 2011 I embarked on a renewable energy tour in White County, IN. I had no idea what to expect, but I was mainly attending out of curiosity anyways. I live in a big city where farmers and their land are very much out of sight, out of mind and it was interesting to see what the farmers of White County were doing with their land and resources. The description of the tour according to the IEEE website is as follows:

"The tour is an all day event with the tour taking four hours having stops at a 500 Megawatt wind farm, a Algae wheel wastewater treatment plant, a Anaerobic Digester running off cattle/swine waste and other organic products to produce 3 megawatts/hour of electricity off methane gas and a visit to the Liberty Landfill for a 6.9 Megawatt biomass power generation plant."

My First Freecycle Transaction

I completed my first Freecycle transaction today! I've been perusing the OFFER posts for something I've been wanting/needing, but I haven't found anything. So I started going through the WANTED posts to see if I could find a post for something that I had laying around and wasn't using. I came across a post for a floor length mirror.  I responded to the post yesterday and set up pick-up for today. Like Vanessa in Sleeping Naked Is Green, I was a little apprehensive, but I live in a condo building so I advised my fellow Freecycler to ring the buzzer and I would come down with the mirror. I ended up getting rid of this mirror...

Basil and Cilantro Planted

A couple days ago I planted the first two plants that will be a part of the indoor garden: basil and cilantro. I've grown basil before, but not cilantro so I'm pretty excited about that. I've also been reading up on how to save seeds from these plants so that I can possibly grow other plants from my own seeds. The main reason that I wanted to write about the basil and cilantro was to share a couple of crafty ideas on how to label your pots so you don't forget which plant is which before it sprouts. The first idea came from Gayla Trail's book Grow Great Grub: Organic Food from Small Spaces. She writes that an inexpensive way to make plant tags is to spray tongue depressors with chalkboard spray and then write in chalk which plant is in that pot and you can always erase the chalk and reuse them! At Christmas time I was given a chalkboard wall decal which I didn't have a purpose for, but I remembered Gayla's idea and came up with my own version. I cut up the wall decal into smaller pieces and stuck them to the pots (labeling what plant was in there and the date that it was planted).

Environmental Enlightenment #7 (Freecycle)

I've always been a fan of hunting through thrift stores. When I was little my mom used to take me on countless journeys to either thrift stores or antique stores. I always thoroughly enjoyed finding some treasure with the 25 cents that I had in my change purse (which I had also found at an antique store for 25 cents!) As I got older my love for second-hand clothing faded. I started wanting the "new" and "in-style" looks. That's when I became aware of Plato's Closet. It's like a thrift store, but they only take in labels and looks that match the current trends. I can't remember the last time that I bought new clothing or shoes, because every time I need something (say a new pair of jeans) I can find it at Plato's Closet.

Environmental Enlightenment #6 (Picking up litter)

Since my parents scolded a drive-by-littering I have become increasingly aware of all the trash in the streets. Add to this the fact that the snow recently melted revealing a nice coating of trash (mainly plastic bottles.) In all seriousness it makes me feel gross. It saddens me to imagine plastic bottles being tossed out of cars with the thought of...? I know that people care about their homes and personal space and it makes me very sad to think that those feelings don't extend any further than their front doors. Also, the recycling drop-off center for my neighborhood is at the end of the block. Come on people! Combining all these factors creates a perfect storm of annoyances for me. So instead of complaining, I decided to do something about it. I'm going to set aside some time each day to go for a walk (exercise, yay!) and pick up trash along the way. I'll end my walk at the recycling drop-off center and return home with any un-recyclables. Of course picking up trash involves some precautions for health reasons so I will be wearing plastic gloves. I did some research and discovered that latex is in fact biodegradable, but landfills don't necessarily create the best environment for decomposition. On the other hand (pun intended) there is a synthetic latex glove made from Nitrile which most recycling facilities are now able to recycle. I haven't decided which glove is the lesser of two evils yet, but I'm hoping to make that decision by tomorrow in order to get this show on the road!

Environmental Enlightenment #5 (Composting)

Once I started paying attention to everything that I was using and throwing away I couldn't help but feel bad about throwing food away. Generally speaking I try to save leftovers and eat them later, but there is always that food that doesn't get eaten. Besides that there is also food waste such as onion skins, peels, fat cut off of meat, egg shells etc that we can't use for eating purposes so it gets thrown away.

I started to research composting. It seems easy enough, if you're blessed with a backyard. However, I live in a condo on the third floor (no balcony either!) I first looked into vermicomposting. They sell plenty of kits (including the worms) and it sounds like a nice little ecosystem. I feed the worms and in turn the worms poop out glorious plant food.  I poured over dozens of reviews and came to find that many people had trouble keeping the worms alive. Apparently they can be pretty picky about what you feed them. Plus, I wasn't too comfortable with the idea of keeping a bunch of worms inside my home. If I had a backyard or balcony it might have been another story...

Environmental Enlightenment #2 (Recycling)

Recycling facilities and programs are different for each area. I can only speak for the area that I live in, which is Chicago. A while back Chicago had a blue bag program which failed miserably. The idea was that everyone could purchase blue garbage bags, fill them with their recyclables and then throw them in the garbage can with the regular garbage. The garbage men would then load everything onto the truck and sort blue bags from regular garbage bags. Sending the blue bags to a recycling facility. There are a few problems with this. Sometimes blue bags would rip open and mix with the regular garbage before they could be sorted out. Also, who wants to reach into a truck full of garbage bags to pull out the blue bags? Gross.