Sustainable Living in Durham

Zero Chance for Zero Waste (Zero Waste Up in Smoke)

Well, our esteemed regional council has fulfilled their prophesy that Zero Waste is not possible.  We are now doomed to feeding a giant burn barrel with enough garbage to keep it going for the next 35 years.  That's several million tons of garbage that we and/or our neighbors (T.O.) will HAVE to produce to satisfy the demand this monster will require.  The debate about safety has also been short sighted.  It certainly won't improve anyone's health so that only leaves negative effects in my opinion.  It certainly won't be safe for the environment and that is where I think the most important issue lies.

I'm very disappointed in the lack of vision and the disregard for meeting carbon reduction goals.  I read one opinion in the local paper where the person made the case that incineration was a better solution for green house gases (GHG) than landfill.  This is pretty misguided.  His argument that methane produced in some landfills is a more potent GHG than the amount of CO2 that would be generated during incineration may be factually accurate but it totally misses the point of Zero Waste or even methane capture that many landfills currently employ.  With Zero Waste you take out the organics and compost them.  You change packaging laws to reduce the waste and make manufacturers create cradle to grave practices.  Saying that this is a provincial and federal issue is merely a cop out.  Think Local, Act Local is the new mantra.  We have to take care of the garbage locally so we should damn well have control of the creation of the garbage in the first place.

Our Regional Council has doomed the next generation in Durham to the same old paradigm of irresponsible use of resources and consumerism that has plagued our generation.  I guess it's easier to keep things the same when you probably won't be alive to see the rotten fruits of your short term thinking.  I think this decision should have been made by a committee of 10 year olds; the ones who will really see and feel the outcome of this decision.  I'm certain they would have chosen Zero Waste as the solution.

That's a Wrap

A Greener Durham   (you can watch some of the segments here: www.rogerstv.com/option.asp?lid=16&rid=2&tid=26146 )

is finished for the season.  Below is a picture of the "crew"; me, Debbie the producer, John the cameraman and Lisa my co-reporter.  We just finished shooting the intros and bits for two specials that will be running on Roger Cable 10 over the summer.  The specials are made up of various segments of A Greener Durham that were shot over the last year, sort of a greatest hits kind of thing...

I'm not sure if A Greener Durham will continue in the fall or not.  I was hoping to do a segment on my wind generator going up but that still hasn't happened yet. 

It's been interesting and challenging doing the greener durham segments.  I hope it's helped motivate some people to expand their thinking and actions towards a sustainable lifestyle.  As I say at the end of my segments "until next time, do the best you can"

Corinne's Gardens

Don't you think Corinne did a great job with the flower gardens this year!

Cardboard Trial

I'm trying to keep the grass down around my trees with the use of a cardboard "collar"  I can get lots of plain cardboard for free and thought that it might make good mulch.  For the cedar trees shown below, I put a piece of cardboard by itself.  I put a thick layer of wood chips on top of the cardboard on the other trees I'm trying it with.  I'm sure that will be more effective but I don't have enough wood chips to do all the trees on our property. 

I checked out one of the trees with cardboard and mulch that was done a couple of weeks ago and the grass is pretty much dead and the cardboard still intact although it is sodden.  Mulch is a real benefit with our very sandy soil.  I also putsome collars around a couple of rows of broccoli and have a couple rows without to compare them to.  So far I really don't see much difference but it's only been a couple of weeks.  I'll let you know how it works out.

Dandelions, what to do with them?

I've heard some people talking about the new pesticide ban in Ontario and what they are to do with the dandelions in their lawn.  My answer is EAT THEM.

Believe it or not, dandelions were brought to North America on purpose by European settlers.  I've heard two different versions of why they were brought and believe both to be true.  They were brought as a food source for honey bees (that were also brought over here) and they were brought for a food source for people.  In fact you can buy dandelion seeds and grow them as a food crop.  It is a variety bred for specially for eating.  All parts of the dandelion are edible.  The roots can be made into a coffee like drink; the leaves can be cooked and eaten like spinach (and are more nutritional than spinach) or eaten raw in a salad and the flowers can be made into dandelion wine.  I've tried them raw and they are a little on the bitter side but make a decent addition to a salad if you don't overpower it.  I've noticed that my chickens love them and I try and feed them a big bunch everyday.  They eat the leaves and flowers with great gusto.  The price is certainly right!  Something to think about next time you're pulling some "weeds"

If you keep your lawn longer (3" or more) it will help keep the weeds down as they can't compete as well with longer grass.  This also helps cut down on the need for watering.  But what good is a lawn really?  I've noticed a lot more people are converting their lawns to gardens which in my opinion is a much better use of the space and can help with your grocery bills if you plant a few veggies in there too.

Efficient Laundry

Our 9 year old front loading washing machine broke down a couple of weeks ago.  My wife figures it gave us over 5,000 loads of laundry in that time.  After finding out what was wrong with it we decided to buy a new one.  The old one was going to cost more than $400 in parts to fix and would have taken me >8 hours of work.  My cousin who repairs appliances has one just like it with a similar problem and he took our old one and will reuse some of the parts to rebuild his.

The clincher to buying a new one was how much better the water use is on the Bosch we bought.  It only uses 5-9 gallons per load and only $10 worth of electricity for the whole year and it has a 30% larger load capacity! I figure the water savings alone will pay for 80% of the cost in ten years.  Being on a well, water is a very serious thing around here.  The Bosch  500+ was the lowest rated water and electrical use (i.e. capacity to resource use) of all brands according to the SEARS website.  It was on Sale and cost us about $1,300 all in.  We are also going after the sales tax rebate that the Ontario government is offering on EnergyStar appliances until August 30 of this year.  Could save us another $97.

The best part of the whole thing is my wife loves the new machine which is VERY important, I don't want to get between Corinne and the washing!  Funny, she doesn't seem to care about me fixing the dryer that hasn't worked in over 3 years.  I guess hand washing will never come back into vogue...!

Chives are Alive

The Magic of Cold Frames

From this....

 

To this, in just 2 months...  Salad anyone?

Ploughed Up!

I finally got the front yard properly ploughed up.  Last fall I sort of ploughed it but it was a real butcher job.  Turns out you have to have a very clean and smooth plough not an old rusty sucker.  After a couple of hours of grinding on it the other day, I got it down to the bare steel.  I ran a cultivator over the rough furrows to smooth them out before I made a second run at ploughing.  Made a huge difference.  In another couple of weeks I'll run the cultivator over it again and get on with planting the warm season crops.

 

The cool season crops are already planted and in various stages of growth.  We've been eating spinach and lettuce from the greenhouse and cold frames for over a month now.  The Asparagus and Rhubarb are just starting to come on too.

 

We made our first delivery to our CSA people (Community Supported Agriculture) last week.  That's why we need the front yard ploughed up now.  This year we're going to try and support 8 families from our 2 acres.   Hopefully the two shady characters in the picture will help out!

Green Living Show

Did you get a chance to go to the biggest green show around?  This was our third year attending and it didn't disappoint.  The speakers were very interesting; the vendors had the green goods and we got a lot of good info once again.

We listened to Steven Louis talk about climate change and the effects this will have on the least culpable among us (the under developed nations are going to pay heavily for our western lifestyle).  His message was delivered with passion and was depressing as hell.  It's clear we have a lot to change and everyone doing their part will surely help but it just won't be enough.  The governments are the ones that have to get their act together and do it very quickly if we want to maintain our current biosphere. I think most people are making efforts to lighten their footprints on the earth, now we have to make some noise and get our leaders to DO SOMETHING. 

Back to the show....

The next speakers talked about all the things to do in order to make your home more energy efficient.  They were very knowledgeable with the nuts and bolts of the various home systems, costs and paybacks.  I think a most people left saying "I have to get a ecoenergy home inspection done"

We brought a shopping list with us.  We wanted some more and better LED lights, a good quality shower head to replace the one that started to leak recently and a natural rubber pillow.  We got some super bright LED lights for the range hood and bathroom from green & clean energy co.  www.greenandcleandirect.com they were priced at $20 and $30; use only 3 watts and are much brighter than the ones we bought last year.  Unfortunately the "standard bulb" sized light was a whopping $90 and I just couldn't bring myself to spend that much even if it does last 50,000 hours.  They had some 24" "fluorescent" style LED's for $75 which wasn't too bad but they were a little big to lug around.  We got an all steel shower head from Watermagic www.watermagic.ca  My mom bought one last year and she was very happy with it.  Should last virtually forever and is easy to clean with our slightly hard water.  The pillow was a bit of a disappointment though as the one I liked was $200.  The cheapest was $50 but it didn't thrill me either.  I'll keep looking.

Of course there were many other vendors with everything from bananas to wind generators and everything in between.  I learn a bit more about the new standard offer the Ontario gov't is working on.  It is reported that a system will pay back between 9and 13 % a year with the rate they are offering for roof top residential solar power generation.  Sounds like the best investment anyone could make these days!  I love this show!