Category Archives: environmentalism

Sustainable Remediation

I’m wrapping up at the Sustainable Remediation Forum meeting in San Diego. It’s a 3 day conference – and it is packed. This week I was waking up at 4AM pacific time, working for a couple of hours, and then going to the conference. The meetings are so interesting that you end up staying there for the full day, chatting with people at breaks, and then group lunches and dinners. It’s incredible! And TIRING.
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This is a good problem to have, though. It’s just lovely to find a group of engaging colleagues with wide and robust interests.

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And did I mention San Diego? We went for a hike in Torrey Pines forest today after the last session. It was so beautiful! Totally worth my imminent red eye home.

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this is day 2 of the #29in29 challenge!

Vote for me!

Y’all, I’m a semi-finalist for Greenest New Yorker. Clearly I have failed at social networking by not requesting that you vote for me already! It’s simple: go to this link, scroll down to the bottom, wait for the voting app to load, and vote for me. Me! unless there’s someone else you like better but really! me!

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It was really hard writing the brief bio. I only had 250 words, and there are so many things I left out. I hit the important stuff like Tiny Choices and motorcycling, but I didn’t talk about my professional chops as much as I could have. Here they are: civil engineering degree from Cooper Union, professionally licensed, hold my LEED AP, masters degree from CMU in environmental engineering and green design, and working in environmental consulting for over 10 years primarily on remediation sites. Active in sustainable remediation groups such as SURF. Co-author of a paper titled “Framework for Integrating Sustainability into Remediation Projects” slated for publication in Remediation Journal this summer. Office lead on company Green Team which is focused on reducing our local impacts on the environment. Seriously, yo: how could I fit all that into 250 words?

Here’s the official bio I submitted – they modified it a little, but I like this one best (because of the MYSTERY surrounding the central leatherstocking district!):

I would love to be selected as “Greenest New Yorker” – I try hard to stay green! Every day I evaluate my choices and decisions to try and find easy ways to be more green. I write about these “tiny choices” on the blog I co-founded four years ago: TinyChoices.com. Most of my blog posts come from my personal life – I live in an old farmhouse with a long commute and understand the kinds of daily decisions most New Yorkers are faced with. We are making our home more efficient, and I ride a motorcycle and drive a hybrid for my commute. We vacation in New York – at least annually we have a fancy weekend date in a new part of the state, and more frequently we have fun family camping and hiking trips. Motorcycling taught me that my favorite kind of trip requires me to take a slower route that focuses on the ride, not the destination – and it’s changed the way I see much of New York State as I explore the backroads on two wheels. I’ve supported local CSAs (and learned to pickle), attended NYS craft and fiber festivals, and am endlessly fascinated by the name “central leatherstocking.” I write about many of my daily activities at www.karinajean.com. My day job is environmental engineering, where I clean up hazardous waste sites and perform sustainability analyses. I heart New York! and love the time I spend getting to know the state better.

Thank you for your support!

Erik Buell is the lone ranger of motorcyclists.

“People should feel guilty about driving big, fat SUVs. Whether it has an electric motor or a gasoline motor, you know, if you’re riding in luxury with multiple screens around you and air conditioning and it’s padded and you’re driving by yourself, you should be embarrassed.  I think people are going to start thinking, ‘This is stupid, we shouldn’t be doing this.’ There’s plenty of other things to be using our resources on, we should be using them to go to the moon or feed the world instead of cranking out more freaking Hummers.”

and

“I don’t necessarily believe that a 1,000cc sportsbike is practical transportation, but compared to a Hummer? Maybe it’s not the most green thing on the planet, but it’s not bad. I hope we don’t come to a world where we’ll all wearing IBM suits and riding Segways to work. God help us. The bikes I want to build, I want them to be fun and capable and cool and work. I don’t want to be in the mundane transportation business.

From the article at Hell for Leather Magazine, which you should probably subscribe to posthaste if you like motorcycles. Or even if you don’t. It’s good stuff, and is for darn sure getting me through my winter of sub-40 deg temperatures and oh did I mention my carb is all ganked up, won’t come apart for me to clean it, and I can’t even start my darn bike anyway?

why sardines are the best.

treehugger just posted a synopsis of a study indicating that one in every four new yorkers has elevated blood mercury levels. The most interesting part is how it seems to be closely linked to fish consumption. which, as you all know, brings me to that subject that all roads at karinajeandotcom end at: sardines. I’ve said before that I love sardines for a number of reasons. I don’t know, though, if I have ever said that mercury is a tricky little guy: it sneaks through the placenta and right into a fetus. Actually, not to be flip about things, but I’ve read that the best way for a woman to reduce her body burden of mercury is to have a baby because that’s the surest way to make sure the mercury will leave your body. which is horrible! and really scary for women who want to or who are having babies!

if you’re concerned or curious about your mercury burden, you can purchase a testing kit from greenpeace (like I did!).  you won’t be included in the study (it was completed in 2006) but it’s still a cheap and easy way to do some science on your head.

waterless car wash

treehugger had a post about a waterless carwash solution a bit ago and I went ahead and bought it yesterday.

I don’t post many photos of my incredibly cute and zippy swank rocket-ship of a honda insight, but if I did, you’d notice I’m not really very good at the car washing shtick. I mean, I’ve mentioned previously how amazing my car looks when it’s nice and clean – it’s something I’m totally aware of. but part of me has always thought “hey, self. so, your car is made out of aluminum and plastic, which won’t rust, so don’t worry about washing it!” and that’s a pretty bad thing for me to think, because I wasn’t that into washing cars when they were made of ferrous metals that would eventually disintegrate, either. I would justify my inattention by saying they’ve already got that “matte” finish, and I am a big car-life-cycle finisher (aka, resale value is not that important to me), so really, what’s the big deal? I would only wash cars when the salt was starting to flake off in big pieces or when I’d go to michelle’s house, because her dad gently ribs me about cars.

about 9 months ago when people were posting to an insight board I read pretty regularly about types of car washing solution and the best way to do it, and I had an epiphany. it’s not the steel body of the car that the washing protects, it’s the paint. and the paint protects the body, which prevents the rust. Hey! honest, I’d never thought about it this way before. The fact that I had to out myself to hundreds of insight drivers as a car-non-washer to reach this level of clarity, now, that was a little embarrassing.

so after restructuring my thoughts on the rationale of carwashing, I thought I should wash my car more. but with the insight you can’t just run it through an automatic car wash because of the wheel skirts, and I never seem to make it to the local cheap hand wash before they close. being in an apartment means no hoses, and my trips to the family seats should be about FUN, not about carwashing. I can probably say with all honesty that in the last 9 months I’ve washed my car less than 4 times. no, really. (eek.) but this waterless car thing, now, that’s more my speed. I could wash my car in the parking lot at work, if I wanted to! I’ll be honest, I will probably never WANT to wash my car, not after the first time, anyway. but at least this way I can’t tell myself that I just CAN’T wash my car. because you know what, I can. I just DON’T.

I bought the starter kit, which includes 4 microfiber towels and the solution itself, for $20. I’ll let y’all know how it works. I’ll also let you know if I am entirely on-board with the notion that the sufactants in the solution successfully wrap themselves around my car’s dirt particles and prevent the paint from scratching as I rub it down.

*** oh, and in crazy synergy news, I just realized that the dude that posted the treehugger article is also one of the brothers in brotherhood 2.0, which I’ve been enjoying pretty regularly. if my brother had to sit in front of a computer all day long like I do, I might make him gank that idea with me. of course, my brother is more of the strong silent electrician type and when we talk I am the chatty one, so it would probably not flow as gracefully as brotherhood 2.0 does. I’m happy with the pre-7AM chats with my dear baby brother when he calls on his way into work.

offsetting

I haven’t posted much about Japan because I have 650 photos and I’m waiting for Ranger’s before I make a big photo post.

I will say, though, that I went ahead and bought an offset for my flight. I got the terrapass intercontinental, which will cover my trip to TN in the fall and my trip to Japan, as well as a future trip within America (probably to GA to visit gramma and aunts and uncles in late spring/early summer, if they’ll have me). it is awfully cheap – only $37 for all those flights – and I got a free luggage tag, something that I wish I had on the trip (there was one airline counter worker who looked at me with absolute scorn when I said I needed to use one of the paper tags that the airlines provide).

you can calculate your required flight offset here.

I had a back and forth with a coworker when he mentioned that Al Gore has been running into some hassle regarding his Freakin’ Big House and how he buys carbon offsets for it. I am not proponent of offsets as a end-all environmental strategy – I think that conservation is most important. Way more important than most people (Dick Cheney, I’m looking at you. It may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is also sufficient basis for MY sound, comprehensive energy policy*). So Yeah, I think that Al should maybe live in a smaller house. and Yeah, I think he ought to get on that zoning thing so he can put up solar panels. But I think it’s important to offset things as well. You create a market for energy conservation and offsetting acts as a private sector subsidy for development of conservation programs and energy efficiencies. That’s really important, because there sure isn’t much public sector subsidizing of that kind of thing. I think offsets are an important bridge between no conservation and conservation. they show elected officials that people care about this sort of thing, and hopefully, they foster development.

All my transportation for the last year has been carbon neutral. and I LOVE that. being carbon neutral plus the value-added by bringing the recycling home from work in my car (I implemented a recycling policy: more on that later) makes me feel a lot better about my selfish choice to live where I do. This is why I say selfish: I could have chosen to live very close to work so I could bike and not drive ~60 miles per day, but I wanted to live where it would be easy to get into NYC to see my friends, and where I could walk to restaurants and the gym, and where I live across the street from the library. I had to find a balance between my personal life and the environment. so buying a 2-seater hybrid and offsetting all of my travel miles makes my decision to live where I do the right one both for me, and for the environment. the new environmentalism is everyone doing what we can within our means and abilities, right? Right.

* “To speak exclusively of conservation is to duck the tough issues… Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it si not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy. People work very hard to get where they are. And the hardest working are the least likely to go around squandering energy, or anything else that costs them money. Our strategy will recongnize that the present crisis does not represent a failing of the American People.” — Dick Cheney, re: 2001 Bush Administration energy policy, 4/30/2001

tiny little turbines

I read about these tiny plastic turbines in treehugger today – they are so freakin’ cool. I immediately sent the link to my dad and stepmom and stepsister – they kind of live on a compound in the woods, and they need more sustainable energy to truly get compound street cred. In all honesty I must admit that the compound was an accident – my stepsister and her husband sold their house before they bought a new one, and they couldn’t find one that fit their needs, so my stepmom offered to divide her property and stepsis is building a home right next door. See? accidental compound. I’m always joking that I need a place to put my tiny and cute straw bale bungalow but sometimes I think about starting a competing compound with my brother and his girlfriend.

anyway, these microturbines are so exciting! you can put them up as a screen or garden fixture in your yard – they’re not bad looking – and just kind of casually generate energy (I refuse to say “reap the wind”). you can get an array of 20 turbines for about $25, apparently – that’s about 3.35x4ft. That sounds pretty fabulous. Now all I need to know is

  1. can you get these made from recycled plastic?
  2. how much electricity will be generated from the turbines?
  3. How easy would it be to create an array in a sturdy frame for traveling, say, on a camping trip? [besides trying to talk my dad into solar and/or small scale wind power on the compound, I also try and talk him into renewables while they camp at the beach]; and
  4. where can I sign up? I want to get some right away!

treehugger links to this plastics news article with more information about the inventor.

other links

speaking of links, here’s some stuff I picked up today on my stroll through various blogs (mostly via treehugger, which is, y’all may know already, pretty darn fabulous:)

  • this guy and his family have sworn to live no-impact for a year in NYC. totally great, and inspiring. and he makes a really valid point: people say we can’t live in cities as ecologically and less-impactful as we can in the country, where we can compost and tailor our living spaces to include efficiencies and power generation. but I read recently (and I wish I could find it again quickly, I think it was in an article about falling developed country birth rates and how america’s immigrants are propping up our future populations) about how quickly our cities are growing. Not living in cities may not be an option for people for much longer, so we really OUGHT to figure out the best ways to conserve and be less impactful while we still can.
  • I figured out the only reason why I should buy a house: not for the equity, or even the tax credits, but to have an extension cord and a driveway so I can buy a tesla electric roadster. they’re opening a showroom in NYC! and in 2009 they’re going to start producing sedans! though at 50K a pop, they’re probably not the car for me – especially if it requires I buy property to support it.
  • wind cubes are cool. if I owned a warehouse, skyscraper, or big box store, I would totally install one on the roof.
  • green as a thistle is endeavoring to make 1 eco-decision to green her life a day for a year. I’ve only skimmed a few posts so far, but I bet there are a lot of good ideas for people to implement!

In other news, it’s absolutely miserable outside with little ice cubes falling and everyone at work stressing out about the roads on the way home. I’ve about decided to work late on purpose so I don’t have to worry about rush hour traffic (and the associated crazy people).

a few things I’ve been learning

that said: I’m so totally off of plastic bags. this is the news story I needed to start getting really nerdy about carrying around tote bags to shops. I even sent an email to my office all about it, and offering to put in a big group purchase of ultracompact bags from reusablebags.com. Anyway, when I cleaned my apartment and went through Every Single Plastic Bag I Own, I was appalled at how many I have. so it’s not going to be tough for me to reuse what I’ve got until they’re gone, and stick with canvas and reusable for shopping. And when they’re gone I’ll start buying recycled plastic bags so as to support the implementation of recycled plastic.

seriously, though. I know about a lot of things! how did I not know about this?

  • I learned that the store brand cottage cheese? does NOT taste as good as the premium brand. it is so much worth the extra 30 cents to get premium brand. now what will I do with a whole container of gross cottage cheese?
  • I learned that if I send an email to everyone in my office about how I don’t think the realty company that owns the building recycles, and include relevant code, the big boss will call people In The Know and ask them to follow up on the issue. Until then, I’ll be a recycling dork and will continue to bring recyclables home with me from work to dispose of properly. I call it “implementing a recycling program.” Nice.
  • oh, check out this really cool toilet/sink combo. it’s super effiecient. of course, this means one can’t really brush ones teeth while your roommate is on the can, but I bet most people don’t do that anyway.

Happy Birthday Insight!

One year ago today I picked up my insight. And this sunday I rolled over 30,000 miles on my way home from pittsburgh. tomorrow is the 30K service, and I need to find a detailer or someone who will wash the car down inside and out and but good as a nice little treat. happy birthday insight! I’m so glad I found you.

Mr. John P[last name withheld]

At the party Sat. night I spent some time with a certain Mr. John P who’s last name rhymes with seltzer only without the t. He is, theoretically, going to be looking for a blog shoutout. he gave me permission to use his last name but after all the google stalking I’ve done in my day (what?) I don’t want to take the risk that someone googles “john [lastname] sardines” and finds my blog, and makes assumptions that he loves sardines. I don’t know if that’s true, see, and I would hate for him to get a reputation.This is John P[last name withheld]:

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I didn’t go to the holiday party last year because of catastrophic car failures, but I hear John was given two environmental assignments for the upcoming year: 1. turn off the water when he brushes his teeth, and 2. bring his own bags to the grocery store. he’s done both of these and was asking for more assignments to green his life. John-who’s-last-name-almost-rhymes-with-seltzer, you rule. here are some suggestions for green living over the next year, pick two and tell me which ones you’ve chosen in comments.

  1. buy a terrapass for your car. just because the mazda 3 is listed as one of the greenest vehicles on the market, there’s no such thing as offsetting too much carbon.
  2. replace 1/2 of your lightbulbs with compact flourescent light bulbs. If every american replaced one incandescent lightbulb with a cfl, it would be the greenhouse gas equivalent of taking 800,000 cars off the road. and that doesn’t even get into energy savings.
  3. no, really: if you’re going to buy a house, try for one in an existing city neighborhood rather than a new suburb. it’s more efficient to have infill because it restricts your necessary driving trips. and then we can have my birthday party in columbus.
  4. If you’re feeling all excited about the environment, how about this week taking the slate/treehugger green challange? there are a lot of tips there that I haven’t even touched on.

dude, also: I think John has some seriously conflicting ideas about me. when planning my pretend 30th birthday party in columbus ohio, he suggested going to a science center to see dorky “the science of star wars’ shows, and also, artsy cultural gallery walks, and also, tossing the ol’ pigskin around (that might have been for him). I mean, it’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other, that’s for sure. but apparently we are practically strangers. We’re going to have to refine that list of activities if columbus is the birthday town!

It just occured to me that I should have towns lobby me as if my 30th birthday party were the olympics. bring it on, america, I’d like to see what you can offer ME.

more CO2 savings

I’ve decided to take the slate-treehugger challenge as an example of how much CO2 I’m saving over the theoretical me who doesn’t have to wait for her living room CFL bulbs to warm up when she gets home at night. this week was electricity, and I have saved 1178 by checking off all the things that I’ve already done. sigh. it doesn’t matter, either, b/c I have windpowered my home.

and for what it’s worth, it’s totally great to replace all your incandecents with CFL. even if they do take a while to warm up and even if they are more expensive and even if you do need to take them to a special disposal place b/c of the mercury content. Totally worth it.

wk 4 of carbon diet

this week’s slate challenge was all about clothes, and while I was hoping for more of a buy vs. make slant, there was more about how one should wash ones cloths in cold water (check) and hang dry laundry (already do for 1/2 of my clothes) or donating old clothes rather than tossing (um, super check, and how about remaking?). so even though I scored 797, I feel like I was cheating b/c every single question? was something I already do. except for the bonus, a pledge to buy an energy star dryer when the time comes, and which is already something I’d do. well.

I know it’s easier to criticize, and I know that I’m beyond the target audience (apparently) in knowledge and practice, but this carbon diet seems to be so dumbed down. what do y’all think? Am I just so hyper nerdy about efficiency and environmentalism that these moot points are actually NOT moot points?

I just bounced this off of our drafter and she pointed out that if people don’t get it, they won’t do it. so I need to be a little more patient and remember this is an education and encouragement tool rather than a true measurement tool. sigh.

tangential round-about story told by a quote.

Kelly to me this weekend [paraphrased]: “you just used the words ‘mitigate’ and ‘hello kitty’ in a sentence. people don’t do that!”

in response to my story about how, when getting the incredibly cool solio shipped out asap for mariss’ birthday, I told the customer service guy that I had hoped to get the white one and not the pink one b/c I have a pink phone already, and I hoped that the white go-go-dancer effect would mitigate the hello kitty effect. but no white, and no silver, so mariss and I both have black ones and I HEART mine and have shown it off to nearly everyone at work. it is so awesome.

week 2 of carbon diet

seriously, this slate carbon diet thing is for the birds. it is absolutely not geared towards apartment dwellers. because I have no control over my thermostat, and because my radiators are freakin’ hot, and because my windows are fairly good already, and because I don’t have any exterior doors to weatherstrip, I got an improvement of zero this week. that’s ok. by living in an apartment building I’m already inherently more efficient than a single family stand alone dwelling. I’ll take that, even if slate doesn’t seem to care.

carbon diet

I was pretty interested when I read about the slate/treehugger green challenge (slate here and treehugger here), wherein one attempts to shave 20% off of ones carbon emissions. I mean, I know I have pretty low carbon emissions. I was so excited after seeing an inconvenient truth that I set about off-setting my driving emisisons with a 12,000 lb CO2 terrapass. I bought green electricity – now 100% of my electricity is coming from NJ wind and solar. and I drive a hybrid! that gets roughly 65 mpg! I’m not even getting into how I’ve alreday changed all my lightbulbs into efficient compact flouresent bulbs, and how I have to wait for my living room to “warm up” after I flip the light switch before I can really see things clearly.The slate/treehugger quizzes seem to assume that you’re not doing so great. I took the first quiz and had to pretend like I had a dishwasher. there wasn’t anywhere to say I was using a hybrid. so I came out with annual emissions of 15,706 lbs, which is not so bad when compared to the US average of 44,312 (and not so good when compared to india at 2,645).

but the difficult part came next, where I took the transportation quiz and was asked to pledge to check my tire pressure monthly (it’s easy when you have tire minders), buy a terra pass (check!) for my car, buy one for my flights (was planning on it anyway – am not sure if I should go international at 7,500 lbs CO2 or frequent flyer at 15,000 lbs – it all depends on if I go to england in addition to heading to japan), and then comes the hard question: do you promise to trade in your car for a hybrid in the next 6 months? well. they don’t know if I have a hybrid, they just know I get 65 mpg. the estimates they use say that “driving a hybrid reduces CO2 emissions by more than 10K lbs a year, assuming you currently drive a car that gets average mileage”. which. well. I don’t. I had better not tell them I’ll trade in my *cough*hybrid*cough* because then the calc works out to me reducing another 17K lbs, and that is more than I am supposedly currently using.

sadly, my busy engineering lifestyle precludes me carpooling or taking the train to work. sigh.

so far, then, I’ve reduced another 1,050 lbs CO2 by telling slate what I have already done. which isn’t so shabby, I guess: if the goal is 20% of total I’m already 1/3 there with 6.6%.

the topics for reduction they’ll look at are transportation, heating, food, clothing, electricity, holidays, water, and home/office. y’all should sign up! it’s interesting!

mpg

I updated the insight page with new mpg information. the exciting news is that I’ve broken the lifetime 60 mpg line this week! yay! now that 60+ mpg sticker is ENTIRELY accurate, instead of just mostly accurate. I hope I can maintain high mpgs with the colder weather that is blowing in – I didn’t start regularly clocking over 60 mpg on the trip calculator until last may. of course, I was still driving kind of really fast then, but I know the cold weather had lots to do with it too.

dork dork dork

I am such a sucker for solar chargers. I’m trying to decide if the solio charger is what I need, or if I should go for something more robust. Probably more robust b/c my rechargable batteries require a wall-socket to charge, and I don’t want to go buying all kinds of specific accessories. but the solio is SO MUCH CUTER than one of the larger, film based chargers! and it’s “only” $100! and then I wouldn’t have to get a car charger for my cell phone!

(un)sustainable agriculture, e.coli, western water rights, and local food.

there is a whole lot that could be said about the e.coli thing. now that the spinach thing has gone from spinach to also lettuce, I was thinking about maybe saying something. Anyway, this whole situation falls neatly under several of the topics on the “things I feel strongly about” list, so I will try to restrain myself. Jesse over at Corduroy Orange has touched on some of the issues in a couple of posts, as well.

maybe bullets will keep me on-track, ordered, and without too much fist raising prosteltizing.

  • I found out that the strain of e.coli that is responsible for the spinach sickness and deaths is a strain that can withstand high-acid conditions. incidentally, when you factory farm cows you create high acid conditions in their stomachs. cows don’t really eat grain alone very happily – it creates something called “feedlot bloat” which creates excess gas that inflates in the cows rumen and which can press on the cows lungs and suffocate them. this is one of the reasons why it’s GOOD that feedlot cows are slaughtered within a year. The grain also makes a high acid condition in the stomachs, which makes for some happy special evil strain of e.coli.
  • the map that jesse posted says this very clearly, but it’s amazing that we are relying on the salinas valley in california for the majority of our produce. not only is this ridiculous, it’s unsustainable for a number of reasons: 1. we shouldn’t have all of our food eggs in one basket, so to speak. 2. fuel costs have been, until recently, going up superfast. these costs weren’t embedded in the cost of our cheap california produce, but they will be sometime! 3. I hear that the northern groundwater wells (primary source of irrigation for the salinas valley) are experiencing saline intrusion. which means, you know, that we’ve got all these eggs in a basket but it turns out the basket is really just a really big hourglass full of sand, and the sand is dropping out of the bottom of the glass, and the some day the eggs will come shooting out as well.
  • if you haven’t read cadillac desert, you really should. the water rights issues in the west will only become more important as time goes by. and now that farmers are learning that they have to pay attention to the run-off from factory farms I can only see some complicated negotiations in the future.
  • I think there should be a serious dialog about the cost of food in america.
  • and while we’re talking, we might want to look into the ENVIRONMENTAL cost of food in america. I’m not just talking about food miles here, but also the unsustainability of an economy that always comes down to a dependance on oil – usually in the form of petrochemical fertilizers.
  • I also think there should be a serious dialog about homeland security. The spinach situation reminds me a lot of the green onion hepatitis A outbreak when I lived in pittsburgh. we can’t just keep getting all this cheap food from around the world without dealing with the social and environmental consequences. who’s picking your food? are they being paid enough to live well? to be hygenic? to treat their own illnesses or to take time off of work when they’re contagious? if these aren’t issues of homeland security, I don’t know what is.

Anyway! not too bad, no? just a quick hop onto the ol’ soap box! so as not to just wave my hands around without offering any real solutions, how about CSAs? they say the personal is the political, and I see food as an extremely political issue. and with any issue, you have to decide where to start and start slowly. you can’t let the scope of the issue overwhelm you into non-action. I’ve decided to start by eating meat infrequently, trying to eat organic and grass-fed where I can, and by purchasing as much local and/or organic food as I can find and afford.

darn cool links

this is totally awesome: modular radiant heating strips for use anywhere in your home.

I’ve been shutting off the powerstrip that juices up my tv, radio, and dvd player, as well as unplugging my microwave, but this power strip will shut off everything that is plugged into it if you turn off a governor appliance, like, a lamp. very easy for people to do.

after talking about it for about 3 months, I just purchased green power for my home. I wanted to do 100% NJ based wind b/c I don’t use much electricity so I can afford to pay the additional 5 cents/kwh, but instead signed up for the option with 1% NJ solar. My decision was made entirely on what local NJ energy renewable I wanted to support.

I just stumbled onto wiki how and it looks neat.

and writing that down reminded me of this really incredible illustration of how a sewing machine works.

I know I’m late to the party, but I don’t want to forget about these fancy modular flooring tiles. miyo vinyl flooring and flor carpet flooring (which are recycleable and available in recycled/natural materials). and I wonder how they’d work with the modular radiant heating?

also, crafty: I’ve added a few new links to the sidebar. adorn magazine is a wonderful new publication that my birthday twin and good friend linda works on. this is love forever, west coast crafty, and paper dolly girl are all crafty blogs of old internet crafty girlfriends. I love it! they are full of inspiration and I know they’ll keep me honest about my crafting. and by keep me honest, I mean: KEEP ME CRAFTING.