Environment Matters
(Tu B'shvat 2006: thanks to Jeff's subtle salesmanship, we sold out of compact fluorescent light bulbs)
Tu B’Shevat [which began at sundown, February 8 this year], also known as the “New Year for Trees”, traditionally marks the day when the sap begins to rise in the trees -- invisibly heralding spring even as winter outwardly grips our world. At TUJ, we especially focus on care for the environment on Tu B’Shevat, but we also encourage everyone to make literally “repairing the earth” part of their everyday lives. In the weeks and months to come, we'll be adding related resources and information to this page.
Tu B'Shevat 2009: What Can TUJ(ers) Do for the Environment?
At the end of our lively 2009 Tu B'shevat seder, guests of all ages took time to share their ideas on how to care for and connect with the environment – as a congregation and as individuals.
Here are some of their thoughts:
- hold a community decluttering drive, with a swap meet and/or a rummage sale to recycle unwanted items
- help collect unused electronics and deliver them to one of the New York City Electronics Recycling events
- take used clothing, bedding, and towels to the city's textile recycling program at Union Square (they take even those ratty t-shirts that Goodwill doesn't want)
- donate wornout furs for reuse in animal shelters
- use a convenient reuseable nylon shopping bag that clips on a keychain – and sell these as a TUJ fundraiser
- provide a collection point for used alkaline batteries
- encourage kids to ride bikes
- start a congregational "Green Committee"
- with PACC, investigate ways to green the church spaces
- buy recycled paper products, like Marcal brand paper goods
- use a metal mug instead of paper cups for on-the-go coffee
- use a metal water bottle instead of buying water in plastic bottles
- plant your own parsley for Passover
- pay attention to household water conservation – don't let faucets run, try showers instead of baths
- use non-toxic cleaning products
Looking Back (And Forward): “The Year in Environmental Actions”
After August, 2008 (see below) I got too busy to keep up a monthly post on the small environmental actions that I was trying to take in my own life (see below for earlier posts)– but I did keep trying new ideas. There were some successes – like paying much more attention to saving energy at work, by recycling my printer paper; retraining myself to set my computer to “hibernate” or shut down at night; and checking my office building before I leave at night to turn out unneeded lights.
There were also some interesting surprises – like when I bought a cheap refrigerator thermometer to find out if I was wasting energy by keeping my fridge too cold. Instead, I discovered that it was slightly too warm, and ended up raising the temperature. Now, instead of saving a little more energy, I’m saving a lot of produce that used to spoil before I was able to use it up.
Looking back, most of the small changes I made turned into permanent, easy habits. I now cringe at the thought of how many plastic bags I used to waste in a year (probably thousands) and now never go out now without my reuseable nylon shopping bag (after much experimentation I finally settled on a model called the “Chico Bag” -- thin enough to fold up into a thumb-sized package, clips onto a keychain, has long enough straps to use as a shoulder bag, and is still amazingly strong and sturdy).
Looking forward – what next? I started out focusing mostly on some “low-hanging fruit” actions that saved not just energy but money -- but gradually I’ve started to think in even broader terms.
Now I’m starting to pay more attention to actions that I know can make a difference without generating personal, visible savings – such as being more careful to conserve household water even though I never see a water bill because (unlike electricity) water is covered in my monthly maintenance.
I’m also balancing some of my energy savings with actions that even sometimes end up costing me a little more money, particularly with regard to making more conscious, sustainable food choices. As a non-vegetarian who eats poultry and fish (though not red meat), one change I’ve been working on is trying to eat humanely raised and sustainable animals whenever possible. Watch this space for more…
The Year in Individual Environmental Actions
Enough excuses! Every month in this space, we'll log our experiences with taking one easy action that helps the environment -- and usually simplifies life and/or saves money at the same time. New month at the top: scroll down for all previous months.
August: How Cool is That?
By the end of August, it’s almost time to put away my trusty little wind devil, a 12” black Vornado brand fan that breezily cools my whole apartment in all but the hottest weather. There was a time when I never would have considered doing without air conditioning, but I became a born-again fan user when I moved into a coop where a large combination air conditioning/heating wall unit – an energy glutton that once added up to $80 a month to my electricity bill from part-time summer use – is the only type of AC allowed. With the help of the Vornado, the AC unit is now reserved for emergency use, like heat waves with temperatures over 95 for more than a couple days in a row.Still, the apartment has to stay cool enough to keep two cats from melting during the day, and cool enough for sleep at night. I experimented with several combinations and types of fans before finding the Vornado – which at an original cost of about $50 has more than paid for itself over the four years I’ve used it. With grass Chinatown beach mats (like delis use to shade their outside produce in the summer) hung on my windows to further cut down the daytime heat, my July-August electricity bill showed that my extra energy cost for summer cooling came to about $8 a month. And I never missed the AC! How cool is that?
July: A Sunflower Grows in Manhattan
Sometimes what it takes to feel connected to the earth is…a patch of real earth, with real plants tempting local bees and butterflies to stop by for a dip of pollen. Having spent many childhood summers exploring a vacant suburban lot that was really a patch of prairie, vibrant with wild berries and flowers (a/k/a “weeds”), I often think about how much harder it is for city kids to develop a sense of connection with the natural world. And adults, too – can Mayor Bloomberg’s “Million Trees Campaign”, laudable as it is, possibly make up for the hundreds of new high rises converting street-level space to concrete?Reminding us that our city spaces are still part of nature’s web, especially the great connection between bee pollinators and food, an organization called the “Great Sunflower Project” last spring offered free wild sunflower seeds to anyone willing to plant them and collect data on bee activity. They noted:
Your home, school or community garden and those around the world produce roughly 15- 20% of all the food we eat. And for the urban poor, who spend 50-70% of their income on food, these gardens are a real source of good nutrition and an essential route to food security.
Whether your garden contains vegetables, fruit trees, flowers, or even medicinal plants, many of these plants must be pollinated before a fruit forms. And as the
headlines for the last year have made clear, bees are under threat.
I was eager to participate but unfortunately my seeds from the project arrived late and failed to germinate. Still I went ahead and planted garden-variety Home Depot seeds in a vacant lot near my East Side apartment (overseen by my neighborhood association), and waited for nature to take its course. As of this late July morning, three plants are now close to seven feet high and still growing, and three smaller varieties have already flowered.
And the bees have come! I watched this morning as one sunflower was visited by a succession of five bees in less than ten minutes. For these bees, for now, at least part of the natural web is still intact. And I hope that the same sunflowers will remind at least some of the passers-by who glimpse them from the adjoining sidewalk that the city belongs to the web.
Better yet if those passers-by are children.
June: Think Global, Eat Local
Lettuce and garlic and bok choi, oh my! After renewing my membership in the Carnegie Hill/Yorkville Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) group, I celebrated the summer solstice by picking up my first weekly allotment of fresh organic vegetables delivered direct from a Catskills farm to our pickup site on a Manhattan streetcorner (photo). From now until Thanksgiving, our weekly deliveries will mark the progress of the season in over 40 kinds of produce…from these early greens to the first beets and onions and tomatoes on through the kale and squash and pumpkins of fall.Like most CSA’s, ours works by subscription, with members pre-paying a farmer directly for a season’s share (or half-share) of vegetables. By providing a predictable guaranteed market, the system helps committed family farmers stay on the land and practice sustainable land use – the antithesis of the corporate farms that now dominate American agriculture. And it helps city dwellers like us eat healthier, connect as a community, honor natural cycles, and make a difference with our food dollars.
Interested in joining a CSA or finding out more? See Just Food, an organization that works to bring CSA’s to underserved New York neighborhoods, for useful information and maps of where to find a CSA in New York. But if you can’t find one -- or it’s not the right option for your life style -- there are still many other ways to personally support sustainable agriculture when you shop for food (see the guides at Sustainable Table for some practical ideas).
May: Greening the Office...It's a Tomato!
No balcony. No backyard. No fire escape. Not even a windowbox. What’s a wannabe gardener to do? Walking through Union Square Market this month, staring yearningly at the bright flower flats and seedlings waiting to be adopted by those lucky New Yorkers with outdoor space, I realized I do have access to one prize piece of gardening real estate: my sunny office window. Now three leafy cherry tomato plants are thriving there, sporting organic tomatoes of every size from pea-sized newborns to plump adolescents like this one. In this strangely cold May they brighten the office, they brighten my mood...and one day soon they’ll brighten my salads.
April: Greening Spring Cleaning
For some, “spring cleaning” is a concrete way to renew our living spaces in acknowledgement of the season’s promise -- for others, it’s also a symbolic act of preparation for Passover.
Unfortunately the lists of ingredients in your average commercial cleaning product reads like a ghoulish soup recipe. Common chemicals: chlorinated phenols (toilet bowl cleaners), harmful to respiratory and circulatory systems; diethylene glycol (window cleaners), neurotoxin; Nonyl phenol ethoxylate (laundry detergents & all purpose cleaners), banned in Europe, biodegrades slowly into even more toxic compounds
Lately I’ve been experimenting with nontoxic alternatives – starting with vinegar and water (1 part white vinegar to 9 parts water, a solution your grandmother probably used) and Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint Soap (found at any health food store). The first works great for cleaning anything from toilet bowls to floors to windows. The Dr. Bronner’s (also diluted in water) is an alternative for dishes or anything that seems to need soap power, and has the added bonus that peppermint is sometimes considered a roach deterrent (hey, this is New York!)
Why make your children, your pets, yourself -- and anyone who is exposed to your household chemicals wherever they end up after they disappear down your drain -- vulnerable? Thanks to these simple changes, these days cleaning feels like less of a burden in many ways. What a happy surprise to me, the child formerly known as the housekeeping-challenged member of my family.
(See Gaiam’s Eight Household Cleaning Agents to Avoid and Boston COEJL’s “Cleaning Supplies” for more information on the chemicals in common cleaners and many ideas for alternatives.)
When I was a kid in Chicago, a cute little bird named “Little Bill” with the body of a light bulb – the trademark of Commonwealth Edison, the local utility company --- chirped happily from TV about the wonders of using more electricity.
Ha! As we all know, times have changed. This month, I found a surprise gift from Con Edison in my mailbox --- a postcard offering a free compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL) as part of a campaign to cut New York City’s energy use. I’m now waiting for my free bulb to arrive, and when it does – since I already have CFL’s everywhere in my apartment -- I plan to take it to work to replace the incandescent in my desk lamp.
Happily, the small, incredibly easy action of replacing an incandescent light bulb with a CFL is a big win-win for both you and the environment. CFL’s last up to 10 times longer than standard incandescents, and their 66% energy savings will be noticeable in your electricity bill. (I can personally attest to this after replacing all 14 bulbs in my apartment over time. Maybe “Little Bill” could have a second life.)
And, according to www.energystar.gov, “if every home in America replaced just one incandescent lightbulb with an Energy Star qualified CFL, in one year it would save enough energy to light more then 3 million homes and prevent greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those of more than 800,000 cars.
CFL’s are now cheaper, sleeker, and more available than ever ($6.88 for a pack of 4 soft white 60-watt-equivalent Energy Star bulbs at Home Depot), and lately I’ve noticed them popping up in unexpected places. Those massive antique-style hanging light fixtures in my office building, each holding 6 bulbs? I would never have guessed that their mellow light is now coming from CFL’s if I hadn’t spotted the bulbs from overhead as I came down the stairs. My friend who once swore she couldn’t use CFL’s because the light was too harsh? Last time I visited, her living room was as cozy as ever but there was a new CFL in each lamp…
Bet you can’t stop with just one.
February: No More (Disposable Plastic) Bag Lady
For February, I resolved to deal with the Closet of Shame in my kitchen, overflowing with disposable plastic shopping bags.
These free plastic bags once seemed like a good idea – until they turned viral. Today, the U.S. consumes 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually – part of the estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags consumed yearly worldwide, according to resusablebags.com.
And they’re choking much more than my closet! They choke oceans --- “hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales, and other marine mammals die every year from eating plastic bags mistaken for food” – they choke landfills, and they break down into “toxic chemical components contaminating soil and waterways.”
For the last two weeks, I’ve been test driving a new collection of inexpensive reusable bags – cheery Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods models; a sturdy white canvas tote giveaway; a capacious blue Ikea bag; an Ecuadorean string sack; a light muslin bag from the Soho store Muji. I’ve also experimented with tucking a disposable plastic bag in an old eyeglass case and carrying it for emergencies.
My favorite so far is the flexible, colorful 79-cent Whole Foods bag made of recycled materials (pictured above) -- but I quickly realized that no one bag fits all purposes. The key to not backsliding, it seems, is to have a variety at hand.
In the meantime, New York City finally passed a bill to require stores to recycle plastic shopping bags. I think this is a great step, but that a better solution for a city where so many people reuse these bags as trash bags – and where plastic trash bags are a necessity -- is to require them to be biodegradable (as San Francisco has done), and/or to tax them (as Ireland has done, successfully eliminating disposable bags according to a recent New York Times article).
I’ll be writing my City Council member about this – but that’s for another month...
January: Lose 20 pounds (of electronics) in 1 Day!
(Before) (After )
It’s a balmy day in January and I'm on the #4 to Union Square lugging 2 old laptops, 1 broken cell phone, and 1 obsolete Palm Pilot to the Lower East Side Ecology Center’s Electronic Waste Recycling Day.There I find an amazing sight: towers of old TVs, mountains of unwanted computers, mini-skyscrapers of broken down printers, and 3 huge moving vans to carry these unwanted New York City electronics away. Talking to one of the many helpers, I discover that they’ve already collected almost 5,000 pounds of computer monitors alone!
How does this benefit the environment? And why not just make your old computer or printer instantly “disappear” by dumping at the curb?
According to the Center, “Discarded computers and electronics are toxic waste! About 70% of the heavy metals in landfill – including lead, mercury, and cadmium – come from discarded electronic equipment. Consider this: just 1/70th of a teaspoon of mercury can contaminate 20 acres of a lake, making the fish unfit to eat…” And.in New York City roughly 21,450 tons of computers and other consumer electronics are trashed each year – a number that is bound to increase.
But instead of ending up as deadly landfill, electronics collected at the Center’s recycling events get broken down and recycled – memory chips harvested and reused, plastic and scrap metal to appropriate recyclers, circuit boards and CRT glass to metal/lead smelters. Also -- an additional benefit and convenience for those of us who are rightfully paranoid about identity theft -- the Ecology Center requires its contractor to wipe out all hard drives.
The Center has a fascinating FAQ with further details, including other ways to responsibly recycle computers and ways to donate non-obsolete ones, as well as a Gallery of Recycling Heroes, intrepid New Yorkers who schlepped their e-trash to recycling sites in taxis, cars, wagons, hand trucks, and wheeled luggage.
The next LESEC Manhattan recyling day will be in March: watch the “TUJ in Action” home page or the Center’s web site for the announcement.
December: Your planet...and your mailbox...will thank you
Was it the 100th J. Crewe catalog or the 110th J. Jill catalog that nearly pushed me over the edge? Luckily, just as I was ready to snap from the daily mailicide in the middle of the Christmas catalog blitz, an NPR show alerted me to a solution: catalogchoice.org. Similar to the “do not call” phone registry, this organization promises to remove your name from unwanted catalog mailing lists. For free.
From their web site, I found out that it’s not just me (or you): the figures are staggering…Every year, 53 billion trees are turned into the 19 billion catalogs mailed to American households, contributing to global warming by emitting as much carbon dioxide as 2 million cars.I discovered that it's easy to create a login and pick the catalogs that you don’t want to receive from the catalogchoice.org list -- and still keep the ones you do want. Major mail order companies like Land’s End and L.L. Bean have signed on, and hundreds of other catalogs are listed.Once you’ve picked your unwanted catalogs, catalogchoice contacts the retailers to remove you from their mailing list.
Other new organizations like 41pounds.com charge a fee ($41 for 41pounds.com) to get rid of a variety of junk mail, which can include credit card mailings as well as catalogs – but if you want to get started delittering your mailbox for free and give the environment a boost at the same time, catalogchoice is a good place to start.
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