I think I can speak for the whole Food Group when I say that things have been/still are crazy busy at school! We presented our Action Learning Project last Monday and I think it was a real success! We had a handful of special guests from the Board of Education and the City of Regina attend; a big thank you to them for taking time out of their busy days to come down to the University and listen to us present. I brought my worms to show and Cooking4two shared her garden-grown homemade salsa with the class. It was a real celebration of all our hard work.
My partner and I also had our first blue bin pick up last week and I have run into an unforeseen challenge of sharing a recycling program. I don't want to sound ungrateful for the support and interest I received when trying to recruit, but since we are sharing the bins and they are in my name, what my neighbour puts in the bin for recycling becomes a reflection of me. Allow me to explain. I made this endeavour as easy as possible by offering to take the bins down to the curb if they are left outside their door the evening before. Since we only have two bins, one each, we need to merge our recyclables so they meet the sorting requirements. When I went to take the bins down, my neighbour's bin wasn't out yet so I wasn't able to do this. The next day I made my way back out to the curb to see if our stuff had been picked up, and I noticed my neighbour's bin was now outside their door. When I discovered my bin had not been picked up yet, I proceeded to take their bin down and merge our items so it would all get taken away. Unfortunately, the sorting guidelines were unclear and there was basically garbage in with their recyclables (i.e. styrofoam, plastic wrappers, paper towel, etc.). I draw the line at digging through someone else's trash so I left it as is, but Crown Shred won't take bins if they notice stuff like that in there. So now I am faced with the dilemma of sending them yet another letter to clarify what is and what is not recyclable. I feel like a bit of a nag to say the least.
On the worm front, I think my bin got a little too damp last week and a few worms tried to escape again. It makes me laugh when I open the bin and see them scaling the wall. I left the lid ajar for part of the day to dry it out and added some eggshells to neutralize any acids and things seem to be back to normal. They are pretty easy little guys to take care of! I also had a classmate contact me to get information on where to get worms to start her own bin. I contacted my worm supplier and set them up to arrange a pickup time. I am very excited that someone else has decided to take on the adventure of vermicomposting. Questions and comments are always welcome!
Yesterday I received one of my many email-subscription newsletter-thingies, and it contained a calendar for April on 30 Days to a Greener Lifestyle. Each month I get one, usually health and wellness related, but this one was more eco-focused so I thought I would share. Feel free to check it out to see what kind of easy changes you can make to reduce your eco-footprint!
-TheDirt
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Community Gardens
Hello,
I just wanted to share a resource with all of you. Since not everyone is able to garden outside on their own property due to inadequate space, community gardens are a great alternative. Community gardens allow you to purchace a plot of land for the season in order to grow produce, which in the end will save you money and provide you with fresh, non processed foods.
Here are some links to community gardens located in various areas within Regina, Saskatchewan:
South
East
Cathedral Village
North Central
For those of you interested in giving back to the community, Grow Regina is an organization that has partnered up with The Regina Food Bank in order to provide fresh produce to Regina residents.
- Flower Power
I just wanted to share a resource with all of you. Since not everyone is able to garden outside on their own property due to inadequate space, community gardens are a great alternative. Community gardens allow you to purchace a plot of land for the season in order to grow produce, which in the end will save you money and provide you with fresh, non processed foods.
Here are some links to community gardens located in various areas within Regina, Saskatchewan:
South
East
Cathedral Village
North Central
For those of you interested in giving back to the community, Grow Regina is an organization that has partnered up with The Regina Food Bank in order to provide fresh produce to Regina residents.
- Flower Power
What Are YOU Going To Do About It?
Hey Guys!
I wanted to start off today's blog with just how amazed and excited I am about all the progress that has been made by the group so far. I believe the members have made such immense progress in their individual actions plans that we are now starting to expand in our work and spread the awareness of our success in hope that others will be inspired by our work. I have personally been committed to such action as: consciously recycling all drink containers, being more aware of the paper and cardboard I throw into the garbage and recycling all of it, becoming more aware of the amounts of expiratory food I buy so that it does not spoil before the expiration date, and recycling all of my unused plastic grocery bags and committing to using cloth reusable ones. I was amazed with how much material I saved from going to the landfill. My garbage ticker has gone from 705.7lbs to 316.3lbs and I feel that that alone is good enough reason to be motivated to continue to be committed to the actions I have taken and to start new actions now that I am more comfortable with these changes. I hope that my progress will inspire the lives of others who read this to make small actions for themselves to help reduce the amount of waste traveling to the landfills.
Our class project is soon coming to an end but our life changes upon Reducing, Reusing, Recycling and responsible food management will not. The group is committed to keeping their changes as permanent ones and are passionate about the progress they have made and will continue to make. It is now important to me and the rest of the members to spread stories of success to others in hopes that they will be inspired to make their own small individual action plans to make a difference by reducing the waste traveling to our landfills. Shrinking landfill spaces and excess amounts of human waste is everyone's problem... What are YOU Going To Do About It?
-Homegrown
I wanted to start off today's blog with just how amazed and excited I am about all the progress that has been made by the group so far. I believe the members have made such immense progress in their individual actions plans that we are now starting to expand in our work and spread the awareness of our success in hope that others will be inspired by our work. I have personally been committed to such action as: consciously recycling all drink containers, being more aware of the paper and cardboard I throw into the garbage and recycling all of it, becoming more aware of the amounts of expiratory food I buy so that it does not spoil before the expiration date, and recycling all of my unused plastic grocery bags and committing to using cloth reusable ones. I was amazed with how much material I saved from going to the landfill. My garbage ticker has gone from 705.7lbs to 316.3lbs and I feel that that alone is good enough reason to be motivated to continue to be committed to the actions I have taken and to start new actions now that I am more comfortable with these changes. I hope that my progress will inspire the lives of others who read this to make small actions for themselves to help reduce the amount of waste traveling to the landfills.
Our class project is soon coming to an end but our life changes upon Reducing, Reusing, Recycling and responsible food management will not. The group is committed to keeping their changes as permanent ones and are passionate about the progress they have made and will continue to make. It is now important to me and the rest of the members to spread stories of success to others in hopes that they will be inspired to make their own small individual action plans to make a difference by reducing the waste traveling to our landfills. Shrinking landfill spaces and excess amounts of human waste is everyone's problem... What are YOU Going To Do About It?
-Homegrown
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Babies or Bugs?
We have also had some interest in our poll this week (it's located just under our tickers, if you haven't checked it out yet) around where to recycle some of the less common items on the list. The Saskatchewan Waste Reduction Council provides a comprehensive list of recycling facilities throughout Saskatchewan. All you do is select your City/Town and the item you are wanting to recycle and it will provide you with a depot in your neighbourhood. You can also search "All Materials" if you want a list of all the possible things you can recycle in your area. Check it out for more information!
Today was also garbage day! Almost two full weeks with the same bag, compared to almost weekly changes before. I also added my bathroom garbage to this bag and it was still down! I had a total of about 3.8lbs of garbage and once I calculated the different bins over a year and added them together, my new annual total is 99.4lbs! I have saved over 300lbs of waste from ending up in our landfill this year! My next goal is the first part of our slogan; the most important part of our slogan. REDUCE! I am still throwing away a lot of needless garbage from excess packaging. The convenience of prepackaged items is what is filling up my bag, so I am going to start taking packaging into consideration when I am grocery shopping from now on! I will let you know what I find!
-TheDirt
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Be The Change
Reducing my personal garbage was a major success. Starting at over 12lbs of garbage per week, I was able to reduce my garbage to around 1lb per week. What a huge difference! Being mindful of what was previously being thrown in the trash and then making small changes on a daily basis, ultimately made a huge change.
I would like to thank you for taking the time to visit our blog and also strongly encourage YOU to take action. You have already taken the first step by visiting our blog and becoming aware of simple actions that can be taken in order to make a change. It is important to remember that together we can make even bigger changes in our world.
- Flower Power
I would like to thank you for taking the time to visit our blog and also strongly encourage YOU to take action. You have already taken the first step by visiting our blog and becoming aware of simple actions that can be taken in order to make a change. It is important to remember that together we can make even bigger changes in our world.
- Flower Power
Thoughts, Actions and Successes!
I have been so motivated by seeing how much I have reduced my garbage. I weigh all the garbage in my house: kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and everything in between. The first week my garbage weight was 21lbs, averaging to 3lbs per day. This past week week it actually took 8 days to fill up a garbage bag (reused grocery bag) and the weight was 5lbs, meaning 0.62lbs of garbage per day. I THINK THAT IS FANTASTIC! I have definitely noticed my language changing as well; I use the word garbage more carefully. I used to use it as a general word for anything I was 'done with' and wanted to get rid of, and now I use it as a word that is at the bottom of a large filter:
Reduce ____ item ------->
If that fails then:
Reuse ____ item --------->
If that fails then:
Recycle ____ item ----------->
If this item has failed all three filters, only then does it go to the landfill and can be described as garbage (my own opinion).
On a different note, since we are 'The Food Group,' I wanted to mention some recent progress in planning meals with expiration dates in mind to avoid waste. To do this I thought I would let you know what supper was like at our house this evening (besides being delicious... haha). My idea was to make spaghetti and meat sauce. I had a few selections of different kinds of noodles which I threw in together. Then I cooked 1lb of ground beef, added in some onion, a sprouting section of garlic, and I grated a sorry looking carrot and put it in with the meat as well. Then I found some slivers of left over green, red, and yellow peppers and mushrooms and tossed them into a pan with some oil to saute them. I then cut a used hamburger bun in half, mixed together some butter and garlic powder and spread it over top, broiling it for 2 minutes.
When it was all ready I put out the mixed noodles, topped with ground beef, carrots, onions and garlic, then tomato sauce, and put the sauteed vegetables on top of that, added some parmesan cheese and the garlic bread! Sooo yummy! With the bonus of using up stuff in my fridge that expires!
Since I'm already writing you now, I'll let you know some neat things that my husband and I have done in the past few weeks. We decided that taking responsible actions concerning the environment is hard, and takes a lot of thought, and occasionally makes you pick through the garbage for something you forgot that was recyclable. However, there are many things that you just have to do once, and it makes a long lasting change. With this in mind, we changed all of our light bulbs over to the squiggly environmental ones, and we got a duel flush toilet!!!
I would love to hear from others about actions they have taken to reduce waste!
All for now,
-Cooking4two
Reduce ____ item ------->
If that fails then:
Reuse ____ item --------->
If that fails then:
Recycle ____ item ----------->
If this item has failed all three filters, only then does it go to the landfill and can be described as garbage (my own opinion).
On a different note, since we are 'The Food Group,' I wanted to mention some recent progress in planning meals with expiration dates in mind to avoid waste. To do this I thought I would let you know what supper was like at our house this evening (besides being delicious... haha). My idea was to make spaghetti and meat sauce. I had a few selections of different kinds of noodles which I threw in together. Then I cooked 1lb of ground beef, added in some onion, a sprouting section of garlic, and I grated a sorry looking carrot and put it in with the meat as well. Then I found some slivers of left over green, red, and yellow peppers and mushrooms and tossed them into a pan with some oil to saute them. I then cut a used hamburger bun in half, mixed together some butter and garlic powder and spread it over top, broiling it for 2 minutes.
When it was all ready I put out the mixed noodles, topped with ground beef, carrots, onions and garlic, then tomato sauce, and put the sauteed vegetables on top of that, added some parmesan cheese and the garlic bread! Sooo yummy! With the bonus of using up stuff in my fridge that expires!
Since I'm already writing you now, I'll let you know some neat things that my husband and I have done in the past few weeks. We decided that taking responsible actions concerning the environment is hard, and takes a lot of thought, and occasionally makes you pick through the garbage for something you forgot that was recyclable. However, there are many things that you just have to do once, and it makes a long lasting change. With this in mind, we changed all of our light bulbs over to the squiggly environmental ones, and we got a duel flush toilet!!!
I would love to hear from others about actions they have taken to reduce waste!
All for now,
-Cooking4two
Celebrate Good Times
I promised an update on my recycling recruitment efforts, so here it is. Better late than never! I distributed the letter to 11 of my surrounding neighbours and had 1 respond. At first I was a little disappointed, but then I started to think in terms of small successes, and this is definitely one worth celebrating. I realized that even if 90% of my neighbours aren't willing to join forces with me to reduce their household garbage, I have hopefully created some awareness in them. I included a small fact about Regina households and a website for them to reference if they wanted more information. I hope they took the time to read the letter and are at least considering how much they might be contributing to the problem. If not, at least I tried. But let's not forget the 1 person I did influence. We received our bins yesterday and our first pickup date is next week. My partner and I started saving our recyclables after we last took the trash out, and I am proud to say that this is the longest we've gone to date without having to change the bag. We have reduced our waste by over half in the last month! That is also something worth celebrating.
On a side note, I had one lonely worm escape last week for no apparent reason. I found him playing a game of tag with my cat just outside of his bin. Don't worry, no one was injured and I returned him to his habitat.
-TheDirt
On a side note, I had one lonely worm escape last week for no apparent reason. I found him playing a game of tag with my cat just outside of his bin. Don't worry, no one was injured and I returned him to his habitat.
-TheDirt
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Gardening To Fit Your Needs
Growing your own vegetables is good for you! The food tastes better, it keeps toxins and bad chemicals out of your body, it saves the gas that it would take to truck them into the grocery store. If you preserve your own after the harvest you won't have to buy cans, or frozen vegetables at the store which saves packaging from ending up in the landfill. If I haven't yet won you over... IT SAVES YOU SO MUCH MONEY and IS SO MUCH MORE CONVENIENT!
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| gardeninggarden.com |
I think that when you start to garden you should start small, and plant some very hardy and usable vegetables to start with. I know I certainly didn't have the patience for broccoli, green peppers or corn my first year. It takes time to see what works best in the space you have available. If an outdoor garden is simply not feasible, I would challenge you to use planters, indoors and out. I love when summer comes around and I can clip off a few lettuce leaves to start a salad or the tops of my green onions to top off some baked potatoes.
It's so easy to do!
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| Containersgardening.com |
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| Vegetablegardener.com |
I think a good place to start would be to plant everything you would need for a nice garden salad: a few kinds of lettuce, some carrots, tomatoes, green onions, green peas, some nice smelling herbs, as well as some simple flowers mixed in. My reason for the flowers is that I get anxious waiting for the vegetables to grow and to be able to use them, so seeing flowers which bloom at a faster rate provides me with some excitement and keeps me positive, while I wait for my harvest. Although I do have an outside garden plot (6'x12'), I have had to use a few tricks such as transplanting green onions, lettuce, tomatoes and herbs into planters and bringing them indoors in order to fit my needs better (aka the dog kept sitting on them, or a friendly rabbit decides to help itself!). Here are a few tips to inspire you in your gardening... and may encourage you that spring is getting closer! (If you are really anxious there is no reason why you can't start now!)
My goal this year is to mix in more flowers with my vegetables, here is a photo of something I aspire to do!
How to start an indoor veggie garden - Readers Digest
How to design a successful indoor garden - Wiki how
7 areas to monitor for indoor plants - About
Grow and Indoor Herb Garden - About
Easy to grow vegetables - Kiddie Gardens
Container gardens - Garden Guides
Have fun! I know I will!
-Cooking4two
Friday, March 4, 2011
Food Prices To Rise
If you were looking for some motivation to start growing some of your own food here is a great clip that might do it for you. Please keep in mind that this video was taken 3 weeks ago - before the most recent dramatic gas price incline. I have planned out my garden plot for this year and plan to double my garden space this year by building another matching plot.
Happy garden planning!
-Cooking4two
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Lights, Camera, Action!
Hello there everyone! I just wanted to check in and update you on a couple of things going on in my recycling world. First, you may have noticed that my ticker went back up a little bit in weight. This was because we found our garbage full a day earlier then normal, but still weighing the same. This meant an increase in the amount of garbage that would be produced over a year. The items still being thrown away were really bothering me, so today I drafted up this fancy letter and distributed it to my neighbours:
The second thing was the creation of this lovely jar you see pictured here. You may be wondering what this delightful contraption is so let me tell you. It is a fruit-fly catcher. We get the occasional fruit-fly due to the smoothies I have for breakfast everyday (I leave out the lemon juice and honey, and substitute flavoured yogurt for plain and mix it to go in my super handy Magic Bullet). Because I am only one person I only use half a banana, which subsequently leaves a half a banana in the fruit bowl every other day to attract those nasty flies. This coupled with our vermicompost has created a bit of an annoying problem. So I created a fly trap out of a glass jar, some bait (a half of a banana peel), a small bag and an elastic band. All you do is place your bait in the bottom of the jar, cut a small hole in the corner of your bag, place your bag into the jar and fold the bag over the edges and secure with an elastic band. The flies can get in but they can't get out. Amazing!
Dear Neighbour:
We are looking into subscribing to a curbside recycling program with Crown Shred & Recycling. It is a biweekly service that will pick up the following household recyclables:
ü Household Glass
ü Aluminum containers & tin cans
ü Milk cartons and milk jugs
ü Plastic beverage bottles, cereal box bags, plastic grocery and garbage bags
ü Household plastic with a number 1 - 7 on the bottom in the recycling logo
ü Brown paper bags and tissue roll cores
ü Corrugated cardboard and paperboard (cereal) boxes
ü Magazines and catalogues
ü Telephone books
ü Junk mail, envelopes, newspaper and flyers
ü Letter-quality paper
ü Gift wrap and packing paper
The cost for a one year subscription is $110 + GST, but we are looking at teaming up with our neighbours to reduce this cost, as well as the amount of garbage we are sending to our landfill. Therefore, the cost will depend on the number of participants we have interested in joining us.
Currently, Regina citizens generate about 1,000kg of solid waste per household annually, with 84% of that ending up in our landfill. Much of this waste includes items from the list above that can be recycled. This has created the need for plans to expand the Regina Landfill, as it has reached its capacity. Check out the City of Regina’s website for more information.
If you are interested in participating, please drop the bottom portion of this letter into our mailbox by no later then Saturday, March 5. Once we have received a total number of participants, we will inform you of the cost as well as a pickup schedule and some simple sorting instructions. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions!
Regards,
TheDirt
We decided to go with Crown Shred & Recycling for group recycling because they accept a few more items then Go Green Recycling, including plastic bags. We found this particularly important because anything that won't fit in your bin can be placed in a bag for pick up. This will be handy if we have lots of interest and happen to accumulate a lot of recycling. I have decided that if no one is interested, then my partner and I will use Go Green Recycling on our own. I will let you know what happens!
The second thing was the creation of this lovely jar you see pictured here. You may be wondering what this delightful contraption is so let me tell you. It is a fruit-fly catcher. We get the occasional fruit-fly due to the smoothies I have for breakfast everyday (I leave out the lemon juice and honey, and substitute flavoured yogurt for plain and mix it to go in my super handy Magic Bullet). Because I am only one person I only use half a banana, which subsequently leaves a half a banana in the fruit bowl every other day to attract those nasty flies. This coupled with our vermicompost has created a bit of an annoying problem. So I created a fly trap out of a glass jar, some bait (a half of a banana peel), a small bag and an elastic band. All you do is place your bait in the bottom of the jar, cut a small hole in the corner of your bag, place your bag into the jar and fold the bag over the edges and secure with an elastic band. The flies can get in but they can't get out. Amazing!
On a side note, my worms are thriving. They are getting bigger and fatter and seem to be loving all the scraps I feed them. I have had to add more shredded newspaper to the bottom of the bin as they seemed to have eaten most of what I gave them. I am also checking on them less often to try and give them some space.
Anyway, I will be sure to report back on my recycling recruitment and any other exciting news that might come up!
-TheDirt
Anyway, I will be sure to report back on my recycling recruitment and any other exciting news that might come up!
-TheDirt
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Look At All That Waste Reduction... It Was Simple!!!
In hopes to reduce the amount of waste my household is sending to the landfill, we have started to recycle a lot more. We have been collecting such things as cardboard, paper, bottle, cans, and plastic bags and have been finding big results in reducing the weight of our garbage these past few weeks. At first I was thinking that having to collect and distribute the various items my household produces (which seems to be a lot) would be more then a hassle then a benefit. BUT... it proved to be very simple and very rewarding. Collecting the various recyclable objects and products was fairly easy and because we have a large garage attached to our house, we had an abundance of room to store the recyclables to be taken away. I was surprised with how fast the garage filled up and started a quest to find close drop offs to take the recyclables. I was anticipating this to be a hard task but it was very simple. I took both the paper/cardboard products and the plastic bags to the Co-op in the east end near my house. There is a large blue paper/cardboard bin in the parking lot there and inside the Co-op store is a drop-off for plastic bags (which I am also trying to reduce the use of with cloth reusable bags). I then took the bottle recyclables to a nearby SARCAN depot where I was able to drop off the bottles and even get a cash return for them which was a bonus for my efforts. When I returned home to my empty garage I felt very good about the small, relatively effortless work I had done to reduce my waste. I will continue to recycle these objects/products in efforts to continue to reduce my waste. I encourage others to do the same small and easy task to reduce large amounts of recyclable products being sent to our landfills.
Below I have attached a few pictures of my recycling (please forgive the images of alcoholic containers)... Think of all of that recycling going to the landfill had I not recycled it. Hope you enjoy them and it encourages you to do more recycling!
Below I have attached a few pictures of my recycling (please forgive the images of alcoholic containers)... Think of all of that recycling going to the landfill had I not recycled it. Hope you enjoy them and it encourages you to do more recycling!
~Homegrown
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