Brand New Old Bike!

I finally have a bike in my possession! My dad was able to give me his old mountain bike. He has a road bike that he uses and no longer needs this one. I used to ride this bike while I was living there, but since then I haven't gotten my own bike mainly because I've been trying to find a used bike which turned out to be harder than I thought (more on that later). So far I have bought a bike basket, a side mirror and a cable lock. These purchases were made easier by the fact that I didn't have to spend money on a bike in the first place.

Environmental Enlightenment #17 (Giving Green Gifts)

I'm making an effort to make ALL aspects of my life more environmentally friendly and this includes giving gifts. The goal is to be able to a) find something the person will like and b) have it be in line with my environmental values. Another part of giving green gifts involves the wrapping paper. This past Christmas 2010 I "knot wrapped" all of my Christmas gifts in order to avoid wasting wrapping paper. I discovered "knot wrapping" at Lush (they will "knot wrap" gifts in the store when asked) which is based on the Japanese tradition of Furoshiki. 

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 #16 (Reusable Produce Bags)

I've been taking reusable grocery bags on my shopping trips for quite a while now and whenever I got to the produce section I always felt bad about having to use those thin plastic produce bags. I tried to rinse them out and reuse them, but at the most I could get two uses out of them. I had no idea that reusable produce bags even existed until I happened to come across an ad for them in a magazine. Right away I knew I had to have them!

Environmental Enlightenment #14 (Lunapads)

Prepare yourself for another "feminine hygiene" related post. When I first wrote about the DivaCup I was only beginning to realize how much this product would change how I handled my monthly gift from mother nature. In this post I would like to go into a little more detail about the DivaCup as well as my new experience with Lunapads.

In my original post about the DivaCup I briefly mentioned Lunapads as an alternative reusable menstrual product, but I hadn't yet tried them for myself. Since I was using the cup I saw no reason for purchasing a Lunapad. While learning how to use the DivaCup I was still wearing a disposable liner "just in case." I thought that once I became confident in my DivaCup skills that I would be able to stop using the liner and just go with the cup. I underestimated my paranoia! The cup has never leaked, but I just can't help wanting some extra protection on the off chance that it does leak. So after reading numerous positive testimonials about Lunapads I decided to try one out for myself. I purchased a mini pantyliner to wear as a back-up with the cup.

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."

Environmental Enlightenment #11 (The Diva Cup)

Let me preface this post by saying that this one is for the ladies. More specifically, this post will be about environmentally friendly feminine products. Boys feel free to stop reading now, or keep reading, but know that I warned you!

When I started reading Sleeping Naked Is Green I was hoping for a chapter on how to green that special time of the month and I was not let down. There was a chapter about The Diva Cup. This was the first time I had heard of menstrual cups and I was instantly intrigued. I had a feeling that a large amount of waste in my life came from disposable pads, tampons and their packaging. The following statistic is taken from the Diva Cup website:

"Women, on average, experience a lifetime menstruation span of 41 years (11-52). From use of disposable feminine hygiene, an estimated 12 billion sanitary pads and 7 billion tampons are dumped into the North American environment each year (1998). More than 170,000 tampon applicators were collected along U.S. coastal areas between 1998 and 1999."

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...

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.

Environmental Enlightenment #1 (Reusable Bags)

My first step towards becoming more environmentally friendly was reusable bags. Easy enough, right? Well, not for everyone. People have told me that they often forget to bring their reusable bags with them to the store. I did this too at first. It's a habit that takes some getting used to and now I try to keep some bags in the car at all times. Still, I rarely see people in stores with reusable bags when I go out to do my shopping. Yet I see them for sale in just about every grocery store. Usually for $1 a bag. Not bad! I've seen reusable bags for sale at big chains like Target, Home Depot, Walgreens and Forever 21 (just to name a few). Even at places that sell the reusable bags it seems like the cashier is always thrown a bit off balance when I present my own bag. Again, I think it is the habit of bagging in paper and/or plastic that is imprinted into our brains.