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May 30, 2007
A Personal Problem With Paper
Let's start this out with a bad haiku about recycling paper products, shall we?
Flattened Tree Remains
Stacked Precariously High
Our Landfills Abound
Nowadays recycled paper products can be anything from specialty papers like elephant poop stationary to recycled material copy and printer paper that is virtually impossible to tell from the standard kind.
Recycled paper products don't just limit the number of trees felled for the care and feeding of your pet printer. Making paper from existing paper means less processing of the tree pulp is needed, and let me tell you, paper processing is a messy business. Also, few papers are 100% recycled materials, because virgin pulp is often needed to keep the paper fibers strong enough to bond.
Truthfully, the best thing you can do here is reduce the total amount of paper you use in the first place. When paper is required, here are some options. Also, I've made some I made ListMania! Lists on Amazon.com for Green Living household paper products, baby & nursery supplies and feminine products.
Kitchen Paper Products
When I looked at what paper products we used in our kitchen, I admit there is not much we can improve upon - but there is always something.
I'm lucky. Paper plates, cups and napkins and plastic utensils never featured in our home while I was growing up. For as long as I can remember, my mother has had washable patioware - plastic plates that could be washed and reused for years. These inexpensive plates cost little more than a package or two of paper plates, so they pay for themselves quickly.
Cloth napkins have always been the norm for us as well. We have many, many different patterns and use them for napkins, to clean up spills, and various other things. They only cost a dollar or two to make yourself, or you can buy them. I'm still surprised when people are afraid to get them dirty. Most are darker, brightly colored patterns and I have yet to have a stain that didn't disappear after a washing.
If you have to use disposables, I've seen some recycled materials ones floating around in the market lately, like Preserve Plateware made from recycled plastic yogurt cups (also dishwasher safe so you can reuse them for a while), or Seventh Generation recycled-material paper plates.
The one paper product we do use in the kitchen is the paper towel and even those are only used as a last resort after the cloth kitchen towels. Usually I buy these paper towels at Costco, but they don't have unbleached paper towels. I just found out that Amazon grocery has Seventh Generation paper towels for substantially less than Costco's Bounty bulk packs. They also have specialty products for babies and women.
You should also remember to limit the cardboard packaging you go through. Buy in bulk and try to avoid single serving varieties of packaging, instead favoring the larger versions.
Bathroom Paper Products
Bathroom paper products are a (forgive the pun) touchy subject. As a person with allergies, I have tried the cheaper brands of facial tissue only to give myself a red nose. Other people swear by certain TP brands. The trick here, I think, is to experiment. Buy a single roll of a new, greener brand when you can, and give it a try. Just like any consumer product, you may need to shop around. Another idea is to use it only in a less frequently used space, like a guest room, where people are unlikely to complain from repetitive usage problems, if you know what I mean.
I am pretty brand loyal to Kleenex, despite the fact that they use only new fibers for "superior softness", but at least the boxes are made from recycled materials. I also hope to see them using fewer chemicals in their manufactoring process on some of their lines. I really don't care what color my tissues are, provided they work.
When we were kids, we had Dixie cups in the bathroom with our favorite cartoon characters. We went through at least a couple a day (2 kids, several drinks and brushings). That adds up fast! Swapping out your Mickey Mouse paper cups for a set of Mickey Mouse dishwasher safe plastic cups will save not only the paper used in the cups, but the packaging, and your time shopping. Just make sure they're dishwasher safe, so you can throw them in once in a while. This is another case of the cups paying for themselves quickly. If you want to have the cups around for guests and such, make sure your kids know to take one cup a day, and to use it throughout the day.
In addition to Seventh Generation, Whole Foods and other more mainstream brands are starting to carry bathroom paper products with at least some portion of recycled materials.
Other Health Products
It's pretty safe to say that anything made of paper or cotton is going to have a green alternative product choice nowadays. Anything fibrous and white is often bleached and treated. Products like cotton balls, swabs, diapers and feminine products all have green options. Organic Essentials is a personal care brand with a green mission.
Office Supplies
It's a sad fact that most office workers will waste more at work than they do at home because they're not paying for it. But in truth, we all pay for it, on a larger scale - landfills are community property, after all. Once it gets there, we all own it.
Firstly, one of the best things you can do in terms of office supplies is to make some corporate policies on consumption.
Some companies do this by giving people and departments codes to the copy machine and such. Others have multiple printers - a final draft one with slick marketing paper, and a draft printer which uses more eco-friendly paper products and inks for internal use that don't have to last forever, where the printers default to printing both sides. Putting a recycle bin near the printer also helps.
You can also provide methods for people to store and share digital documents instead of printing them to read them. In a personal office, signing up for online bill pay will reduce the paper statements you get in the mail, and you can store them on your hard drive instead.
Recycled paper mailing supplies and printing papers are pretty readily available these days, and seem to look and act just like their bleached newly-treed equivalents.
Also remember that your standard office also needs to consider kitchen and bath products, just like a household does. Nowadays there are even green cleaning agencies around.
Posted by sorsha at 2:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Green Cleaning: What's Going Down The Drain?
When I heard that California Sea Otters are dying due to a parasite found in flushable cat litter, I started thinking about all the stuff that goes down the drain in the average household.
Recent studies have found that fish populations are greatly affected by the estrogen hormones being flushed down toilets as a result of women taking birth control pills. All the great pills we pop eventually find their way out into waste water plants, which only remove certain chemicals before discharging the waste water back into the oceans and the environment. We might not want to have big families, but we certainly want wild fishing populations to have them. Right now we appear to be doping up male fish so they start looking and acting like girls. Clearly we need to address some of these hormones and chemicals during the treatment phase, because banning meds is not an option.
My Shark Hormone Haiku:
Popped The Pill And Peed
Sharks Take To Dressing In Drag
No More Jaws Sequels
After thinking about all the lovely stuff we humans send down our drains, I decided that it was time to do an audit on all the bad stuff washing down our drains at home. I consider us a pretty green household, but I was rather freaked out when I started counting all the stuff going down the drain. Waste water comes from five main sources in our house: sinks, showers, toilets, laundry machines, and outside in the yard.
Kitchen Cleaning Products
Seventh Generation and Simple Green seem to be some of the most easily accessible "green" brands and has a variety of general purpose cleaners you'd normally use on a regular basis. You can get these products at places like Whole Foods, some mainstream grocery stores, and online at places like Amazon Grocery. Costco carries Simple Green. The Seventh Generation line ranges from cleaning products to laundry and paper products. They also have specialty products for babies and women.
Sometimes you have to hunt more for green specialty products, like Earth Friendly Products Dishwasher Rinse Aid. Earth Friendly Brands also goes by the ECOS label, and includes a line of products that overlaps well with Seventh Generation and others. Ecover also makes a rinse aid and other dishwasher and laundry products.
If you're looking for something a little more posh, Mrs. Meyer's cleaning products have great scents and are a nice green choice. Mrs. Meyers is sold at specialty kitchen stores and online places like Amazon, etc.
Laundry Cleaning Products
When it comes to laundry, I go with the bulk strategy and buy a giant container of concentrated low-sudsing detergent that is dye-free, etc. I buy it from Costco and I just found out its also High-Efficiency washer compliant. That said, when switching to a private septic system, you have to be more careful, and perhaps everyone, even people on city water like us, should keep to those precautions. There are a number of eco-friendly laundry products out there and the various brands I've mentioned before in the cleaning area all have laundry products as well. Also, these greener laundry products often have scent-free versions for people who are sensitive to such things.
Chlorine bleach is something you're going to avoid. Companies like Seventh Generation have a Chlorine Free Bleach.
Bathroom Products
I personally like Method Brand liquid soaps in the bathroom. They smell good and are biodegradable, etc. Their packaging is made from recyclable materials and they don't test on animals. They are also available in cheap three-packs at Costco, so I like them for that, too.
Glass, mirror and bowl cleaners are available from a variety of green brands, including Seventh Generation and Earth Friendly Products. Lesser known brands like Naturally Yours also have tub and tile cleaners, toilet cleaners, and bleach products.
Pet Products
Pet litter is a tricky topic. Firstly, many litters are very bad for the environment and for the animal. Wood litters like cedar shavings are toxic to the animal. Since our rabbits tend to chew on their litter and nest in it, we have to use something non-toxic. We use Yesterday's News which is made of recycled newspaper. Yesterday's News also comes in cat, ferret, rabbit and small animal (guinea pigs, mice, rats, etc) versions.
In colder areas where people sometimes keep kitty litter in their trunks in winter in case they get stuck in the snow and ice - make sure you get eco-friendly litters. Better yet, bring dirt instead.
You also want to avoid flushable cat litters. As I said before, the same parasite (Toxoplasma gondii) that causes doctors to warn pregnant mothers away from cats and their litter boxes is now being flushed down the toilets and ending up in the bays and killing sea otters.
Outdoor Cleaners
Outdoor cleaners like carwashes and deck cleaners often go straight into the ground, or where we live, they go down the drain and flow straight out into the Monterey Bay. The water is not treated like the water you flush down the drain is. Therefore it is even more important that you turn a critical eye on these sorts of products.
Simple Green seems to focus more on liquid cleaning products that are non-toxic and biodegradable. They have the normal line of cleansers, plus some very useful ones I haven't seen in many other green brands: car/wheel wash, DIY pressurewasher stuff for deck, siding and driveways, paint cleanup (replacing stuff like paint thinner), bbq and carpet cleaners.
Companies like BioShield have products like eco-friendly paints and stains as well as cleaning products. I have not found a good supplier of these guys yet, but you can get their products online.
Lawn and Garden Products
Pesticides, fungicides, etc. are very prevalent in garden products. Home organic gardening products and tactics are certainly more Earth-friendly. Consider checking out a book like The Green Gardener: Working with Nature, Not Against It or another guide like it for some alternatives.
Other Health and Household Products
Shaving Cream, toothpaste, mouthwash, shampoos and conditioners, hairsprays. Nowadays there are natural and organic alternatives to many standard brands. Check out the National Geographic Green Product Guide for greener brands of your favorite personal care items.
Method Brand also has some specialty products like Granite & Marble Countertop Spray and Leather Cleaner.
And now for my green cleaning haiku.
Primordial Goo
Disinfected, Nothing Grows
Mr. Clean Prevails
Posted by sorsha at 12:18 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
May 29, 2007
Wacky Wildlife At The Waterhole
They're cute, they're plump and they're just a tad... pink.
Baby hippos within a pod tend to hang out together in what is called a crèche. Literally, a crèche is a daycare.. for little hippos. These young hippos are protected by all the females in the pod.
Hippos have very few predators. As adults, nothing can take them (other than humans), but when they are still little, sometimes a lion or a crocodile will get desperate and try to eat one. Baby hippos are sometimes killed by the dominant male hippo if he has taken over a pod and wants to mate with the mother.
I've seen what happens when a lioness tries to eat a little hippo, and generally it doesn't go well for the cat.
I was once on a safari in Pilanesburg National Park in South Africa. A friend and I were watching a pride of lions at dusk. Earlier in the day, we had seen a very young hippo down by the water with two females. As the sun set, the hippos began to trek out into the grasslands to graze for the night. The pride of lions lay waiting in a gully.
We watched for a long time as a large female hippo munched her way straight towards the lions, the little baby hippo at her side. Then the lions disappeared. The guide said that the lions would never be foolish enough to try to eat the hippo, but we were skeptical. I distinctly remember arguing with the guy... and then I spied it. What looked like a bush about 10 feet in front of the hippos was actually a female lioness. I remember saying, "Hey, that's no bush. That's a bloody lion!"
We bickered over this claim with the guide, eventually betting him free game drives for us the next night. The next thing we knew, all hell broke lose. The female had sprung and within seconds, the adult hippo protecting the baby had thrashed her. The female was fairly seriously wounded in the exchange and left, dragging her left behind her.
We had a nice free drive the next evening.
Little hippos are pretty hardy and they grow up (and out) quite fast. It may seem a bit strange to see giant crocs hanging out near the little pink cuties, but it really does happen that way. I like to think its the crocs being smart enough not to really piss of their neighbors. Water sources, especially in Africa, routinely swell and dry up. Semi-aquatic animals like hippos and crocs are forced into very close quarters, and they have a loosely developed symbiotic relationship.
(1) Hippos leave the water, eat lots of stuff, and poop in the water, replenishing its nutrients
(2) Stuff grows in the water, like fish and plants
(3) Animals come to the water to eat the stuff
(4) Crocs eat the animals that come to the water
In this way, one could argue that hippos are a keystone species.
Despite seeing hippos and crocs together all the time, I still find their strange relationship fascinating. Recently, National Geographic caught some exceptionally strange behavior at the waterhole - hippos following the crocs around and licking them, even when the crocs are busy death-rolling and chewing away on wildebeest.
Is it the salt? The bugs? What's going on here?
Posted by sorsha at 3:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 19, 2007
Olallieberry! What Does Organic Actually Mean?
Santa Cruz is famous for its olallieberries. Olallieberries are used in pies, in syrups, in preserves. We even had olallieberries in our wedding cake from a local Santa Cruz bakery.
Inevitably, people ask: What is an olallieberry? Or maybe they ask: What is an ollalieberry, olallaberry, olalliberry, ollalaberry or an ollaliberry? No one can agree on the spelling.
Our answer has always been: A cross between a blackberry and a raspberry.
The truth, you see, is not that simple, but then it never is. At least not on this blog.
Olallieberries are hybrids of other hybrids. Some were created on purpose to make super berry bushes and others happened accidentally, resulting in a very yummy berry.
Olallieberry | ||||||
| / | \ | |||||
Loganberry | Youngberry | |||||
| / | \ | / | \ | |||
Raspberry | Blackberry | Blackberry | Dewberry | |||
A Dewberry is a blackberry-like berry, and let's not go there, ok?
I wondered, then what the heck is a Boysenberry? Supposedly its some mix amongst blackberry, red raspberry and Loganberry.
Why am I telling you this? Well. It all started last week when I was trying to figure out how to grow our own olallieberries. I also wanted to know if they could be grown in the Northeast, where my parents live.
When I told my husband about the interesting hybridization history of the olallieberries and boysenberries, he had a rather amusing reaction. First, he got this really hurt look on his face, and said something to the effect of "but my mother said we had wild boysenberries when I was little".
I told him I didn't see why he couldn't have had wild boysenberries when he was younger and he responded with "but they couldn't have been organic". I didn't see how you couldn't have a "wild" hybrid, but I suppose I was thinking hybrid "gone to seed" or left to fend for itself. I also didn't see how berries growing on their own in the forest wouldn't be organic.
And that's how our strange discussion of organic came about.
Just what does organic mean?
My understanding is that organic has nothing to do with what species you're growing (plant or animal) but the dictates the process by which it is grown. The process has to be free of artificial pesticides and additives, hormones and such. The post-harvest processing also may have regulatory requirements, like not adding preservatives.
Organic produce can be hybrids like the olallieberry or boysenberry. Organic does not mean native varieties of plants and animals, nor does it mean that the species grown wasn't modified some way or another. The USDA hasn't really taken a stand on the definition of the word "organic" yet, but so far, cloned meat, for example, could be called organic if it was raised with organic feed and not given hormones, etc.
Organic crossbreeds appear to be very common, ranging from the obvious cattle and chicken species that have been bred for production markets (naturally hardy, disease resistant, larger, etc) and range to more exotics like beefalo (Cows X American Buffalo/Bison). Plant varietials have the same sort of thing going: various berries, fruits especially, considering the truly wild versions of these plants don't fruit nearly as plentifully as the ones people have "improved" for centuries. In California, organic tangelo (mandarin-orange X grapefruit) crops are plentiful despite being natives of Asia. Organic honey comes from bees that aren't native to North America. Basically, the short answer is, you could cross a chicken with a boysenberry, and call the result organic, provided it was fed and cared for properly.
I certainly support organic farming (especially strawberries cause they taste way better). What's this all mean to me?
(1) "Organic" needs a clear definition to farmers and consumers
(2) "Organic" isn't descriptive enough on its own to be "healthy"
(3) "Organic" doesn't really cover other good farming practices (sustainability, cage-free)
(4) "Organic" is rather short-sighted. It *appears* to me that its a grey area when a parent isn't organic but the offspring is raised that way... So can you feed a mommy chicken sewage waste provided you take her chicks away as eggs and raise them organically?
(5) "Organic" alone isn't as beneficial as buying local organic produce (hopefully more natives)
And with that, I'm off to the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Cooking For Solutions, a dining and wine event composed entirely of edibles produced in ways that preserve the soil, water and ocean wildlife.
Posted by sorsha at 8:37 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
May 18, 2007
Back To Our Future: Use That 1.21 Gigawatts To Power Vermont Instead
1.21 Gigawatts! Yes, that's what the Flux Capacitor needs in order to make time travel possible. But it also makes other, more realistic things possible. I use the term realistic loosely, you'll see.
Just as we start looking at solar options for our home, reading the fine print on energy subsidies for early adopters, Google is putting up a 9,200 panel solar system, with a capacity of 1.6 megawatts (I'm surprised they didn't go for 1.21 gigawatts). I'm pleased they're doing this but they say they can offset the equivalent of 1000 California homes.
I started out trying to figure out how many California homes would be offset by 1.21 gigawatts! But I quickly realized I didn't quite "get" Google's numbers...quite. I based my calculations on this solar calculation method.
Step 1: Define our solar system. Heh.
We are building a 1.21 gigawatt! solar system. Take that, Google!
1.21 gW! = 1210 mW = 1,210,000 kW = 1,210,000,000 watts
Incidentally, I asked my husband about the size of solar panels he's been looking into. Panel size tends to be vendor specific, but some reasonably priced 180 watt panels run 5ft x 3ft, or about 12 watts per square foot. I'm sure you could make nicer ones but we go with what we know.
For our system, we will need 6,722,223 panels, which would be about a 2593 panel rectangle. So our fictitious solar panel system would be roughly the size of 2,315 acres, or 2,400 football fields. Probably somewhat larger because of spacing of the panels. A large ranch would do.
Step 2: Where Shall This Shiny Beauty Go?
The Feds provide us with a useful USA map of solar energy potential.
Clearly the Southwest is the best spot, but we're going to pick a couple:
- San Francisco Bay, California (Yellow) - ~ 5.5 hours/day
- Las Vegas, Nevada (it's shiny already, Orange) - 6.5 hours/day
- Conway, New Hampshire (Green) - ~4.5 hours/day
- We won't be putting one in Sequim, WA...
Step 3: Determine our "realistic" energy usage
According to the DOE, the average US home uses 10,656 kWh/year, or 29kWh/day. That said, energy consumption can vary greatly by region. It will also vary by type of energy but for here, we are just going to look at grid-based electricity usage.
I had a real hard time getting statistics for yearly households in specific states. You can click the statistic to find where I got it, but they might not be accurate and I know the data is often several years old (census driven, etc). Also, the definition of a household varies, as does the size of the average household because the square footage of the average New York or San Francisco house is going to be much smaller than the average house size in Nevada or New Hampshire. Still, this is the best I could find. I've put all the math here so you can do it yourself if you have better numbers.
- San Francisco Bay, California - 5914 kWh/year, or 16 kWh/day
- Las Vegas, Nevada (Cheap rates) - ~11,722 kWh/year, or 32 kWh/day
- Conway, New Hampshire - 6,750 kWh/year, or 19 kWh/day
Step 4: Figure your household daily needs
- Nationally: 29 kWh/day / ~ 5 hours of sun = 5.8 kW
- San Francisco Bay, California - 16 kWh/day / 5.5 hours of sun = 2.9 kW
- Las Vegas, Nevada - 32 kWh/day / 6.5 hours of sun = 4.9 kW
- Conway, New Hampshire - 19 kWh/day / 4.5 hours = 4.2 kW
Step 5: Add a quality control fudge factor (dust, solar eclipses)
- Nationally: 1.2 * 5.8 kW => 7kW per household
- San Francisco Bay, California: 1.2 * 2.9 kW => 3.5kW per household
- Las Vegas, Nevada: 1.2 * 4.9 kW => 6kW per household
- Conway, New Hampshire: 1.2 * 4.2 kW => 5kW per household
Step 6: How many local homes can a 1.21 gW system offset?
- Nationally: 1.21 gW / 7kW = 172,857 households
- San Francisco Bay, California: 1.21 gW / 3.5kW = 345,714 households
- Las Vegas, Nevada: 1.21 gW / 6kW = 201,667 households
- Conway, New Hampshire: 1.21 gW / 5kW = 242,000 households
Incidentally, according to these guys, there are only 474,750 households in New Hampshire, so that covers more than Conway, it covers 51% of the state. If Conway sold the power to nearby Vermont, it would power the entire state of Vermont households (240,744 households) and leave just enough to cover the 1300ish households in Conway, New Hampshire itself. Remember, this does not count non-residential use.
Step 7: A little bit of result verification
Google claims their 1.6 mW system offsets about 1000 California homes. By my numbers, a 1.6 mW system would support about 756 California households. Not too far off. Definately within range if they had a different California consumption number, but if they used the national numbers, it would be more like 229 homes...
There we have it.
My next question is, can we see this 1.21 gW baby from space? It seems very unlikely.
Posted by sorsha at 11:04 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
May 14, 2007
Is A Fed Sea Lion A Dead Sea Lion?
America's National Parks including Yosemite NP and Yellowstone NP have used the slogan "A Fed Bear Is A Dead Bear" in order to keep visitors from feeding the bears and conditioning them to humans. Once a bear gets a taste for human foods, it will often become a problem bear, which eventually results in its demise.
Lately, more and more stores of marine mammals interacting with humans having been reaching my ears. These cases have strong similarities to past stories of bears in parks. Perhaps you've heard of the sea lions jumping into people's boats and swamping them, but feeding the sea lions at the wharf is not something visitors automatically think is a bad idea.
A close relative to the bear evolutionarily, sea lions are just as smart as bears, likely moreso. And just like bears, they can become conditioned to humans and become problem animals. Even when great care is taken to try to keep an animal wild, any contact can change the balance.
Rehabilitated animals seem to live a tenuous existence. If they were captured young, they seem more likely to take to their human caretakers, and resist reintroduction into the wild. Such is the case of Astro, the Stellar Sea Lion.
Abandoned as a pup out in Año Nuevo State Reserve last year, Astro was taken in by researchers. He was eventually released, but despite several attempts to establish him in the wild he continues to come back to people. Recently, he was taken out to the sea lion colonies on the Farallon Islands, about 30 miles out of San Francisco Bay.
This past Friday, he returned again.
The marine mammal apparently noticed children doing laps Friday morning around a course they had set up at the Marin Country Day School, next to the shores of San Francisco Bay. The 185-pound Steller sea lion waddled ashore, shocking students and teachers.
“He did a whole lap,” said Kelly Watson, director of constituent relations and web communications at the private school.
More At: MSNBC: Sea lion joins Calif. schoolkids’ walk-a-thon
Since Astro refuses to stay wild, he will likely end up in an aquarium, just as problem bears sometimes end up in zoos. As more and more people flock to beaches as recreation areas, will we see more and more of this?
Posted by sorsha at 11:35 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 11, 2007
Green Gear & Recyclables Roundup
I am way behind in my postings and I'm going to apologize now and then try to catch up. I never seem to have enough time, and right now life and work are so busy, it's not even funny. I thought I'd start with a couple of blurbs about products and services I've been using lately.
Stinky Stationary
For my birthday, a friend gave me a recycled paper journal made entirely from elephant excrement, by the The Great Elephant Poo Poo Paper Company. The first thing I did when I opened it up was sniffed it and no, it really doesn't smell. The paper itself is smooth enough for a ballpoint pen but a little rough, which is to be expected in an artsy handmade paper journal. I keep the journal in my purse for jotting down blog ideas I won't have time to write about.
Toothsome Treats
A few weeks ago, my husband and I were going away for the weekend and I realized we had forgotten our toothbrush. As I was at Whole Foods buying the best chocolate bar on Earth (Vermont's Lake Champlain Hazelnut Five Star Bar), I decided to check out their personal care stuff. All of their toothbrushes are made with recycled handles and have replacable brush areas. I snagged Radius's Source Toothbrush with a handle made entirely of renewable plant fibers. Not only is it pretty, it has a very nice large brush surface with wide, radiating bristles. It comes with a replacement brush head. Also, the handle can be reversed for lefties.
Recyclable Disposables
All this running around has made caffeine more necessary. I happened to be in Starbucks the other day and was glad to see so many of their paper products, including their baked goods sleeves, using recycled paper. I've been becoming more and more frustrated with public places that are not providing recycling as an option for their customers.
Cleaner Air...ports
And speaking of recycling. I was very pleased to see that the San Jose International Airport in the Bay Area is now offering recycling bins with all their trash bins. Very few airports do this, but it makes a huge difference since most airports sell a lot of bottles, cans and newspapers. I think all public buildings, especially government ones, should have manditory recycle bins. I also think that counties should pass legislation requiring retail business locations of a certain size (think Wal-Mart, grocery stores, airports, amusement parks, rest stops and malls) to have recycling facilities available as part of their planning.
I had to buy a cross-country plane ticket the other day and I was shopping around for the best fares. I hit upon one that was half the price of all the rest and decided to purchase it through Expedia. When I was going through the checkout process, I was offered an opportunity to purchase a TerraPass, which basically funds clean energy projects enough to offset your flight's carbon emissions. As I was doing two cross country flights, I purchased two $16 passes, which funded 5,000 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions. You also get cool green luggage tags, which just arrived in the mail.
Green Car Rentals
Lastly, when I went to rent a car, I found that a new class of vehicles is available - The Green Cars. In the areas I was visiting, these cars were generally just fuel efficient (28 MPG+) cars like the Ford Fusion, but I know that in places like California, there are more green rental car options. Still, it's a start.
Posted by sorsha at 2:45 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
May 7, 2007
Critter Cake
We celebrated my 30th birthday on Cinco de Mayo this past weekend. I decided to try my hand at cake decorating, and of course I wanted something ridiculously advanced - an Amazing Amazon Cake. I know this has little to do with wildlife photography, but this is my blog, so I'm posting about my cake. It's also the reason I haven't posted here all week. It took that long to make the cake!
Inside the Cake
The filling was a moist carrot cake from Mich Turner's cake book Spectacular Cakes. It was made from mostly organic ingredients including coconut, walnuts, carrots, rum-soaked golden raisins, orange and lemon juice, flour and sugar. I got the recipe from a cake cookbook - the recipe was once used for Pierce Brosnan's wedding cake. Then the cake was split and frosted with a layer of orange buttercream frosting, covered with home-made marzipan to seal it for freshness and frosted again with orange buttercream.
Decorating the Cake
After that, I had to decorate the cake. With my short attention span, I knew I had to break up the work over a couple of days or I would start getting lazy and sloppy. Even tackling it this way, it was a lot of work each day. So after reviewing everything I needed to do, I planned my individual tasks:
Day 1: Buy remaining fresh ingredients
Day 2: Weigh fondant (sugar dough), flavor and color portions, ziplock
Day 3: Bake cakes, Cool, split and ice layers in orange buttercream
Day 4: Make marzipan, cover cakes, allow day to set. Sculpt animals
Day 5: Ice w/buttercream, assemble cake. Photos. Eat cake.
Sculpting the animals, including the elephant, lion, tiger, zebra and monkey (arguably a bear), took several hours alone. Each was about 5 inches high. We modified the plans to include tusks on the elephant and various other little touches. The fondant sugar paste is edible, but not very tasty. The only person interested in eating one was our young elementary school friend Jarod, who claimed the monkey.
Eating the Cake
This cake tasted nothing like a store-bought carrot cake. It was built more like a fruit cake, but since I hate fruitcake, its hard to explain why it was good. It was very moist from the citrus syrup you pour on it after you cook the cake, and then sealing it with marzipan. All the flavors - the cake, the syrup, the marzipan and the icing all mingled so well together, you didn't need to serve it with ice cream, etc. The cake recipe is for a wedding-like cake, and it looked and tasted like one.
Yum!
Posted by sorsha at 3:51 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
