Plastic · Eco-Chick

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My Dream (Hobbit?) House

My friend Chris Baskind says this house is for “upwardly mobile, fashion forward hobbits.” I THINK that describes me….

OK, I’m having a severe case of house lust. Have you ever seen a cuter little abode? Check the website for more pictures, as well as plans and details of the sustainable aspects of the this “Low Impact Woodland Home”, which include:

* Dug into hillside for low visual impact and shelter
* Stone and mud from diggings used for retaining walls, foundations etc.
* Frame of oak thinnings (spare wood) from surrounding woodland
* Reciprocal roof rafters are structurally and aesthaetically fantastic and very easy to do
* Straw bales in floor, walls and roof for super-insulation and easy building
* Plastic sheet and mud/turf roof for low impact and ease
* Lime plaster on walls is breathable and low energy to manufacture (compared to cement)
* Reclaimed (scrap) wood for floors and fittings
* Anything you could possibly want is in a rubbish pile somewhere (windows, burner, plumbing, wiring…)
* Woodburner for heating – renewable and locally plentiful
* Flue goes through big stone/plaster lump to retain and slowly release heat
* Fridge is cooled by air coming underground through foundations
* Skylight in roof lets in natural feeling light
* Solar panels for lighting, music and computing
* Water by gravity from nearby spring
* Compost toilet
* Roof water collects in pond for garden etc.

Not only is it so cozy and inviting, it is gorgeous inside too!

And in case you were feeling like a productive member of society, to top it off, this couple built the house for around $6,000 with a baby and a toddler to distract them! (I guess now I’d feel bad about kicking them out and moving in, since it would just be me and my cats and dog. But not that bad, ha ha!)

Baby, eating, Energy, farm, Fashion, garden, Home, Lighting, local, Music, oil, pictures, plastic, skin, spa, spring, sustainable, water, wood

Don't Be A Turkey: Get Your Thanksgiving Feast Green

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by Olivia Zaleski · 11/18/07

Originally posted on The Huffington Post on November 14th, 2007

Photo from Channel14.com.

In 1621 the Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag Indians stuffed their faces in an autumn harvest feast–the first Thanksgiving. Although Historians aren’t certain of the menu, it’s safe to say the pilgrims weren’t gobbling up pesticide-smothered potatoes and antibiotic-infused turkey.

Fast forward nearly four centuries, and this Thursday the majority of American’s will sit down to a copious table of factory-produced food. With few exceptions, 178 million plus turkeys will come from animal factories, while the vast majority of our fruits, vegetables; even vino will travel hundreds of miles from foreign farm factories. Such processing plants are reported to have few regulations and less regard for environmental best practice.

While raising turkeys in an industrial setting, or growing corn in a pesticide patch might make our food cheaper and available to a large number of consumers, factory farming comes with serious negative consequences for mother earth–clear cutting, dead zones, water wastage, methane-farting cattle, the list goes on. According to a 2006 study by the University of Chicago*, industrialized livestock produces more greenhouse gas emissions than global transportation.

Such studies come at a time when meat consumption, having quadrupled in the last 50 years, reaches an all-time high. The Worldwatch Institute claims global livestock population has increased 60 percent since 1961, and the number of for-food fowl has flown (try saying that ten times) from a stable 4.2 billion to blasphemous 15.7 billion.

Unlike the wild birds the Pilgrims ate, factory turkeys need antibiotics to stay alive, let alone healthy. Excuse me for being graphic, but the majority of factory-raised animals are reported to live so closely packed together that they have to defecate on each other. Such close-quarters create a cesspool of nasty, even deadly bacteria. I could go on and on.

Now, I’m not saying you should serve tofurkey this Thanksgiving. Although conventional meat production causes deforestation, polluted waterways and greenhouse gas blabidy-blah, I won’t insist you replace the traditional Turkey with a slab of coagulated soybean cake–that would be gross and grossly hypocritical.

Perhaps hypocritical is an understatement considering I can barely go three weeks, perhaps even three days, without vivid fantasies of red meat bbq. Many lonely nights I have resembled the McDonald’s Hamburgler, tip-toeing to the kitchen to gobble a few helpings of red-meat leftovers–ones I had so earnestly tried to refuse at dinner.

Confessions aside, there are a several environmental consequences to consider before we stuff-our-gobs this Thanksgiving day. And although I am not ready to hit up the tofurkey just yet, I sincerely hope to find a way/ask my mom to replace this years Franken-food feast with local and organic produce. In addition to spiking the apple cider, join me this Thanksgiving by following these three simple green food tips:

For the tips, keep reading……

agriculture, Animals, Australia, autumn, birds, Bush, business, car, cleaning, community, consumption, corn, CSA, deforestation, eating, Eco-Chick, emissions, Energy, farm, farming, farms, Food, fruit, fur, gas, giving, health, India, local, meat, mom, News, north carolina, oil, Organic, paper, Personalized, Plants, plastic, plates, produce, reduce, restaurant, soy, sport, sustainable, transportation, travel, waste, water

Mad Mats!

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by Starre Vartan · 11/12/07

These cool rugs, called Mad mats, are not only made from recycled plastic, they are inexpensive too! And since they’re made from plastic, you can use them on your patio, porch, or deck, or in the garden, or even in a kids’ room (or college dorm). To clean, just hose off!

farm, garden, kids, plastic, recycle, recycled

A Bottle of No Thanks, Please

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by Craig Platt · 10/09/07

Bottled water is so easy. It’s water, in a bottle, genius! I remember when it was chic and served in the finest restaurants. Then one morning I woke up and my mother told me we were getting a water bottle for the house. No longer was the tap good enough. After another five years or so she didn’t want to wait for the Poland Spring man to deliver our weekly allotment of water, so there it was: bottles upon shimmering bottles in our refrigerator. People come to our office for a meeting or you head off to a job interview and what to they offer? A bottle of water. It’s like an angel on your shoulder wishing you the safest and most comforting taste of pure H2O.

Never once did I ask myself, “What’s wrong with bottled water?” Not until I realized how many bottles collected into my recycling bin. Trash is a funny thing, one moment it’s in your kitchen and the next it vanishes. Presumably we trust that our trash goes…Well, I don’t really know where I thought my trash went.

I recently read the book, The World Without Us, which contained an entire chapter dedicated to the evils of plastic. It turns out that all the plastic we use and love, (hey I have to admit that it’s nice when you can drop a bottle without it shattering all over the floor), ends up in our oceans, and takes about a gajillion years to decompose (maybe I’m exaggerating, but I doubt it). The impact it has on the fish, mollusks, birds and plant life of the sea is completely shocking and promises to change the ecosystem as we know it. There really is no known half-life for plastic. It breaks into little pellets sure, but how does it react with the natural world, and what does it become as it degenerates?

One of the big offenders is the bottled water industry. We’ve become as addicted to bottled water in recent years as stockbrokers in the 80s were to cocaine. In fact every restaurant I enter now offers bottled water both flat and sparkling, and then almost disdainfully, they mention that tap is available too. They make you feel like an idiot if you order the tap water. They make you feel cheap, plebian. I always answer, Los Angeles’ finest.

Tap water was important when I was a kid, not just to stay hydrated, but because the water supply contained fluoride. Many bottled waters don’t contain fluoride and this is leading to children with unhealthy teeth. The reason being…You guessed it, bottled water. Fluoridated water is free from our taps, and makes your kids’ teeth happy. Most bottled water does not contain fluoride.

Lewis Black, the comedian, sums this entire bottled water thing up quite hysterically by saying we’ve sullied even our most ample and free resource. About 70% of the planet is covered in ocean and 2% of the earth’s water is fresh water. To put that in perspective, there are roughly 326 million trillion gallons of water on planet earth and 2% is fresh. That’s a lot of fresh water. And somehow we’ve agreed to pay our hard earned money for this gift of nature.

And, upon agreeing to buy this water we’ve also created a cost that nature must pay…We pitch in 38 billion bottles of water a year, roughly $1 billion worth of plastic.

But, enough with the depressing stuff. On with the progress!

There are restaurants rebelling against these industries and while blindly voting with your dollar is not advised, supporting the fight is. In San Francisco, there is a new trend: high end restaurants serving carafes of filtered tap water. In some cases they even carbonate the water themselves.Glass carafes served into glasses of water equals much less waste. So we applaud these restaurants and suggest that you demand the same from your restaurant in your neighborhood.

So, find out what restaurants in your area do this. If your favorite one doesn’t, then urge them to. We can make a change, I think. We just have to want to. And if anyone tells you bottled water is better, tell them they’re wrong. Free, clean, healthy water is a privilege. In some countries it’s impossible to find. Save the money you spend on water to buy something that can actually help you save those pure, crystalline springs they harvest all that clean crisp water from.

Amazon, birds, book, books, bottled water, car, carbon, children, crisp, farm, filter, fish, health, interview, kids, liver, Los Angeles, media, mom, News, oceans, plastic, Recycling, restaurant, spa, spring, trash, waste, water, Water Bottle

If You Must Dryclean….

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by Starre Vartan · 09/03/07

My little pile of separated drycleaning materials

I do have some clothes that need drycleaning and as I’m getting ready for Autumn, I’ve been making sure my sweaters and wool pants from last Winter are ready to go. You never know when you’re going to wake up in the morning with frost on the window (I can’t wait!). Besides seeking out and patronizing PERC-free or wet-drying cleaners, (sometimes called ‘organic’ cleaners) as they use fewer harmful chemicals, there are other ways you can make your drycleaning process less wasteful. For more information on why to avoid PERC, and a lowdown on the various types of alternative cleaning available, go here.

As I was organizing my closet, I had a bunch of the plastic hanger bags, paper hanger covers, and of course, hangers piling up on the floor. What to do? Well, I pulled them all apart, making little obsessive piles of the various components:

-The paper bits were folded and added to my paper recycling.

-The plastic bags were tied off on the ends, tightly (since they have that hole there for the hangars to go through), and will be used for garbage bags.

-The twisty ties go into my kitchen drawer where I will used them for everything from keeping my tomato plants held up to attaching my cat’s tail to her leg (just kidding!).

-The hangers will go back to the cleaners so they can reuse them, since I would never hang my clothes on them in my closet. Not only do they ruin the shoulders of your shirts, but have you ever seen the scene in Mommy Dearest with the wire hangers? My grandma raised me, and she had similar, though less-violent feelings about such hangers. Using them would result in my grams turning over in her grave.

-The plastic clothespin thingies and/or safety pins that keep skirts on the hangar also go back to the cleaners for reuse.

Don’t just throw a wad of plastic, paper and wire hangar into the garbage, reuse and recycle! Of course, if you can avoid drycleaning (by buying clothes that don’t need to be) in the first place, that’s the best way to go.