Today, we took our new Yard Chipper out of its box and put it to work. (And I broke it all in one day.)
<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/20343339@N00/4094435620/” title=”Chipper by sarahtar, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2757/4094435620_1468022fa6.jpg” width=”332″ height=”500″ alt=”Chipper” /></a>
Um, can you say LOVE?
Here at our little Urban Homestead, we have tons of trees. They are beautiful and also a pain in the butt. One of the reasons they’re a pain in the butt is that they regularly drop large branches. Usually during storms, but sometimes just for kicks. When I say large branches, I mean that I have friends who have trees that are smaller than these branches.
These branches accumulate in the yard. We haul them into a pile. And then, after a year, we have a huge pile. In the city, we can’t burn our pile. So, if we need to have tree service, we pay the tree service people to haul it away. This is expensive, but we’ve done it. Otherwise, we could chop the branches up into the 3 foot lengths required for city pickup, and pay the city to pick it up. Expensive and labor-intensive.
Add to this nonsense the fact that we have a high need for mulch around here. Mulch is also expensive.
Enter the Yard Chipper. Yeah, it was like $150. Yeah, that’s kind of a lot. But, um, hello? FREE MULCH! Just in today’s work, in which I nearly obliterated our backyard brush pile, it’s easily paid for itself in terms of money saved in haulaway charges, and money saved in purchasing mulch.
Even more, it’s another step towards being self-sufficient. We have the source for all the mulch we could possibly need or want right here in our yard. Why buy it from the store?
In case you’re wondering, our chipper is a Yard Machines electric model. Most of our yard equipment is electric. It will handle branches up to 1.25 inches in diameter, though it’s more realistic to say that it’ll handle straight branches 1.25 inches. Anything bigger, we cut up with our chainsaw (rechargeable cordless electric Ryobi) and add to the woodpile for use in our outdoor fireplace. Or our indoor one if we ever get the chimney fixed.
I’ve been reading back over posts from blogs in my Bloglines that I have saved for one reason or another. I had this one marked, thinking about putting it into practice at our house this spring.
The main obstacle for my house seems to be that my washer is not only a long, long way from anything that might need to be watered, but it’s also underground. I’ll be curious to see if the washer pumps the water out with enough force to propel the water uphill and some distance away.
Filed under: Waste
Well, we finally got our giant blue rolling recycle bin about a month ago. I think we were among the last people in the city to get one! I had some initial concerns about storage space for it – we barely have a place for the city-required garbage receptacle, and I wasn’t sure where we’d put the equally-large recycle bin.
I will say, that concern has not been totally addressed – we have it parked in our driveway, awkwardly jutting into the space also occupied by my car, and causing somewhat of a problem when we try to get into the car sometimes. (Or, when I try to back in.) And it looks pretty bad, but that whole side of my house is hardly a landscaping mecca, so I can’t really complain.
But the problem of finding a place to stash it is more than overridden by how much I love the bin and the new process. No more limits on cardboard boxes. No more keeping paper separate from cans and glass. I just toss everything – junk mail, cans, whatever – into our recycling bin in the kitchen, and we carry it out and dump it into the big bin whenever it gets full.
This is another aspect of the new bins that the city never really mentioned – because the blue bins have lids, I don’t have to store my recycling inside the house until pickup day. Since our recycling gets picked up only every other week, our family (and many others) found ourselves running out of indoor space for our recycling. These new, huge, lidded bins take care of this.
And, our family is recycling so much more! Before the big blue bin, once we ran out of space to store recycling inside, we’d generally just start tossing stuff in the trash. The other option of letting the recycling pile up in unattractive heaps in the kitchen wasn’t too super appealing. (No, taking it to the garage was not an option. I’m lazy, and marching up and down the awkward steps to the basement while carrying a newborn AND recycling is just not really top on my list of things to do. Plus, I’m not sure we can fit anything in there besides the car. It’s a tiny garage.)
So – yay!
I had the opportunity to participate in a clothing swap this morning. It was completely awesome, and I came home with some new-to-me pants that fit my postpartum figure, without having to go to the store and buy new. I didn’t take any pictures, but our lovely hostess Jessica did, and she’s written about the event at her blog, TattooedMama’s House. She includes some tips to get you started on your own clothing swap! Go check it out!
Filed under: Waste
First, Garbage. Someone asked me a while back whether we use disposable garbage bags. They said that they assumed we did not, but then what did we use?
I answered that we did, of course, use plastic garbage bags – there’s not really an alternative. But I think perhaps I misunderstood the question a bit, and I thought I’d explain here what our family does.
I use disposable garbage bags in the kitchen garbage can, which is our main garbage can in the house, and also the only one that collects “icky” garbage. We typically use super cheap garbage bags, the kind that tear easily, because I don’t believe in wasting money on garbage bags. There are “biodegradable” garbage bags out there for those so inclined.
Then none of the other garbage cans in our house use liners. On garbage day, we get another garbage bag and empty all of the other cans into that bag before taking it and the kitchen garbage out to the street. In addition, every once in a while, when I’ve just done a whole lot of cutting for Wallypop, I sometimes use a giant outdoor-size garbage bag for all the scraps I create. (Then, because the bag is inevitably only half full, I end up keeping it around for weeks as I slowly fill it up with other garbage from the house.)
I have experimented with using grocery bags as trash can liners, but I have a few problems with this. First, I have to specifically remember to NOT use our reusable grocery bags in order to have bags to reuse, but then that sort of defeats the purpose of not just buying bags – I’m not really saving any waste or plastic from being consumed. Second, I think it just looks unslightly. (And, really, what’s more important than pretty-looking garbage cans??)
So that’s what my family does, it’s how we feel we can best take care of the garbage/waste we produce. We are still continually working on improving how much waste we produce!
Filed under: Waste
Logging in to Amazon to check the status of a recent order, I was greeted by a welcome message that discusses Amazon’s new effort to provide products in frustration-free packaging. This packaging is also, not coincidentally, more environmentally-friendly. Yay! Let’s hope more manufacturers and retailers follow suit.
I want to address the latest in a series of articles out of Great Britain that are attempting to assert that cloth diapers are bad for the environment.
My husband sent me this article this morning.
The report found that using washable nappies, hailed by councils throughout Britain as a key way of saving the planet, have a higher carbon footprint than their disposable equivalents unless parents adopt an extreme approach to laundering them.
To reduce the impact of cloth nappies on climate change parents would have to hang wet nappies out to dry all year round, keep them for years for use on younger children, and make sure the water in their washing machines does not exceed 60C.
(snip)
The report found that while disposable nappies used over 2½ years would have a global warming , impact of 550kg of CO2 reusable nappies produced 570kg of CO2 on average. But if parents used tumble dryers and washed the reusable nappies at 90C, the impact could spiral to . 993kg of CO2
There are five key things here.
The first two involve the “extreme” laundry approaches, haha.
1) Washing diapers at 60C instead of 90C. 60C is 140F. Most US government agencies recommend that US families keep their water heaters at around 130-140F. The recommendations for families with small children is 120-125, which is also apparently the temperature at which most detergents work best. (I looked at about 10 articles online to come up with those numbers. Here and Here are two of them.)
One of our own local cloth diapering moms who is from Europe has said in the past that Europeans tend to have their washing machines washing clothes at MUCH higher temperatures than we use in America, and that might explain why they are calling 60C “extreme.”
2) Hanging dipes to dry. I will admit that I don’t have any sort of engineering degree, so I can’t examine this in detail. But when I was doing my Extreme Cost Comparison for Wallypop, I found that the average US dryer uses about 3.3 kwh per cycle. That’s not a whole heck of a lot. Of course, many of us DO hang our diapers out (I know that’s my preference).
3) Keeping diapers for at least 2.5 years. The vast majority of cloth diaper users, at least in this country, either DO keep their diapers to use on future children, or else they sell them to other parents to use. Other than one-size diapers, which often last through only one child, I would be surprised if there are very many diapers in America that get thrown away instead of passed along. I chuckle that the article considers this to be “extreme.”
4) Other environmental impacts other than just carbon footprint with the end-user. The study seems to have completely neglected other ways that things impact the environment than just energy use. Landfills certainly impact the environment. Sending human poop into the garbage rather than the sewer certainly impacts the environment. The manufacture of disposable diapers certainly impacts the environment (as does the manufacture of cloth diapers, just less so). As with most articles of this type, there is absolutely no mention of comparing the whole lifecycle of the diapers.
5) No mention of other ways to reduce the environmental impact of diapering. Cloth babies tend to potty train earlier, reducing the impact of diapering. Hemp and bamboo diapers are softer on the environment than cotton diapers are. Buying quality diapers that will last and last and last will reduce the impact of diapering.
So, when you see articlces like this, put on your Critical Thinking cap and really look at what they’re saying.
written by Sara Janssen about a year ago but still very relevant.
It’s so fun to go grocery shopping when you have pretty bags to bring your food home in! My counter was brimming with color today…I just couldn’t help but take a photo. If you’ve never made the switch to cloth grocery bags…you’re missing out. But don’t stop at groceries! Bring them to every store!
My most recent find was cloth produce bags. Instead of using all of those flimsy plastic bags in the produce aisle, you can use these great organic bags.
My favorite places to get bags:
Reusable Bags
Ecobags
I prefer the bags with long handles. I think they are easier to carry…you can put them over your shoulder, or tie the handles in a knot and carry them like a traditional plastic bag. These bags stretch and can hold an amazing amount of food. They won’t break. Of course, you don’t have to get fancy string bags. Cloth tote bags from the thrift store work perfectly fine too! There are so many bags with company logos, event logos, etc. on them…you can snatch them up at any Goodwill.
Go cloth!
As you may know, our family set some goals of reducing waste and reducing our exposure to plastics this year. here’s an update on progress.
Waste: We’re doing good with recycling, and are recycling more than we did last year, though I’m constantly frustrated that we can’t recycle MORE. I have a backlog of cardboard boxes (limit: 4 per recycling pickup) and need to figure out how to acquire FEWER boxes. Unfortunately, it’s a side effect of my business. Many of the things I order arrive in cardboard boxes. I send out customer orders using re-used cardboard boxes when I can, but some of the boxes are so large that, realistically speaking, I’ll never have an order THAT big. For a while, I had friends who were moving all over the place, and they got my boxes, but they’ve been piling up a bit lately. Plus, we moved numerous boxes from my mom’s house when we cleaned it out (those were re-used, too – the boxes her dialysis supplies came in). Some of those have been deposited – full of books – at Half Price Books, but I think they just throw them away, so that’s not a great solution.
The other challenge continues to be reducing the amount of waste we bring in. We’ve made great strides in this area, but hit a big bump with W’s fourth birthday in April. Holy cow, the packaging! My goodness.
I did a major basement purge in March and ended up with about three large garbage bags full of trash, which I didn’t feel all that bad about. We recycled the paper we could, but most of it was actual, genuine garbage. And since it meant that that junk was no longer cluttering up my basement, well, it didn’t feel too bad. It was mostly stuff I’d needed emotionally after my dad died, but with the recent death of my mother, I no longer felt I needed to hang on to. So that was a good thing.
Plastic. I had hoped to remove our plastic (vinyl) shower curtain in April and replace it with a nice cloth one. That did not get done, I’ve frankly been so busy trying to play catch-up with Wallypop that I didn’t have time to do any personal sewing. The shower curtain is no longer at the TOP of my personal sewing list, but it is on there, and it will get done. I take solace in the knowledge that the curtain is very old and is likely done offgassing.
Our porcelain over cast iron kitchen sink has slowly eaten all but 2 of our kitchen glasses. The temptation is strong to just replace those with plastic cups, but I think we’ll stick with glass – maybe thicker glass this time – unless I can find some metal ones. I’ll be keeping an eye on secondhand and antique stores for a bit before we hit the retail stores. I’ll also be buying more ceramic glasses from Crackpots at the next Craft Saturday in June.
I’m feeling like it’s time to pay more attention to this plastics issue, so my goal is to investigate alternatives to the large plastic bottle we use in our bubbler (water fountain). I’ve heard rumors that there are glass bottles available, but never looked into it. Would I be able to lift a 5 gallon glass water jug??
Filed under: Waste
This was originally published by former Des Moines resident Sara Janssen on her blog Walk Slowly, Live Wildly. Sara is currently touring the country in her eco-friendly RV on the Live Lightly Tour.
I’ve been thinking about trash.
Moving to a small apartment with a small garbage can has made me very aware of what I throw away. Having to walk the garbage bag down 3 flights of stairs, then down another to the basement, out the back door…and a short walk to the alley makes me not want to make much trash! We usually fill up one small garbage bag a week…but even that seems like so much! I’m still trying to figure out where I could take my food scraps to reduce that even further. One of my goals during The Compact is to buy groceries/food with little to no packaging. This drastically reduces the amount of trash one produces. I’m amazed by how much trash we can throw away just by ordering take-out one night! Wow.
A movie that is closely related to this topic is “The Gleaners and I” (thanks Ali!). I just finished watching this quirky little French film about modern day gleaners and urban scavengers. It was incredibly interesting to me…I’ve always been curious about the lives of experienced dumpster divers and people who live completely off of the trash that others create. The movie goes far beyond that and delves into the world of found object art and into the lives of those making a difference in their neighborhoods. I can’t say enough about this movie…I think everyone should see it.
The Compact has me on the lookout for items that I can re-use or use in a different way. In my research about these things, I came across some fun Flickr groups dealing with this topic:
ReUSE Project
Tips for Recycling and Reusing
Junkin’
Trashion Nation
There are also some great sites dealing specifically with re-fashioning items of clothing:
Wardrobe Refashion
Wardrobe Refashion (Flickr)
Little Brown Dress ::: Recycling Project
And more sites discussing found object (trash) art:
Metroactive
Art from Trash
Books to check out:
Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash
Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday Things
Today, when you throw something away…ask yourself if it could be recycled, re-used, or given to someone who needs it (Freecycle!). In a disposable culture…it may feel weird at first, but it does the earth GOOD!
