365 Days Of Trash: 2/17/08 - 2/24/08

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Thursday, February 21, 2008

The Alguita Returns Home

"For a solid two hours, we fished as fast as we could, pulling up floats, toothbrushes, plastic and glass bottles, a golf ball, a billiard ball, an unused glue stick for a hot glue gun, and several rope boluses filled with crabs and tiny striped fish - But most appalling was the plastic confetti. An endless stream of delicate, white snowflakes, like plastic powder coating the ocean’s surface. This, remarked Charlie, is indicative of the gyre, “where the trash comes home to roost and degrade…..” - From The Alguita's Blog

My friends Anna and Marcus are returning tomorrow from their trip across the Pacific to study the Pacific Gyre. I fear that I have been less than active in passing on their words from the voyage, mostly due to being sick at first and then overwhelmed by all of the things I didn't get to while I was sick. Theirs is an unbelievable journey and story and one that should be heard by everyone. As soon as they have settled in, I will surely be speaking with them to hear first hand accounts of what they found and pass along what I learn.

In the meantime, here are a few links to some stories that have been written about them, and links to the remainder of the posts from their voyage.

Common Dreams
San Francisco Chronicle
LA Times
London Independent

And from the blog

Calm After The Synthetic Storm
Following A River Of Trash In The Sea
It's A Plankton Eat Plankton World
Algalita’s message traveling around the world. Day 18 – Travel day
Day 19 - Sifting The Sahara
Entering the Eastern Garbage Patch "Where Our Trash Comes Home"
Dinner Dissection and A "Safe Seafood" Recipe
Return To the Garbage Patch Sampled In 1999
Creatures of the Night Emerge
Words From The Crew
Valentines Day
Keeping Our Wits In The Doldrums
No Title Today
Questions Lead To Questions
72 hour Countdown
Come join us in welcoming ORV Alguita back to Long Beach!
Let's Talk About The Weather

Dave

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Washin' the car

This morning was a rainy day in LA and as a result, I decided to wash the car. Now at first, washing the car in the rain may seem a bit strange, but in reality it makes perfect sense. You don't need to wet down the car, and you don't need to worry about the soap drying, so you can take your time and really clean it. The whole operation used a small bucket of water for rinsing the rag, and about a 2 minute rinse with the hose, which was on low (it was just misting at that point). Of course, you're going to end up with some water spots, but not too bad.

For suds I like to use Simple Green as it is non-toxic, biodegradable, and works really well (it smells cool too). We buy it in bulk, dilute it in a spray bottle, and use it forever. It's great stuff.

I don't wash my car too often but because I show it to school kids I don't like it to get too dirty either. When it's summertime, I try to wash it early in the AM or later in the evening, and I pull the car up on the lawn so the water ends up being used rather than heading down the street as run off.

And on top of saving water and feeding the lawns, both of these activities get a few weird looks from the neighbors, so the way I figure it, it's all good!

Dave

Day 51 - Wednesday 2/20/08

Today's Haul:

2 paper Studio passes - worms
1 cardboard ice cream sandwich box - recycle
1 plastic ice cream sandwich wrap - recycle
5 restaurant hot dog "boats" - recycle
4 paper napkins - worms
2 condiment packets - garbage
4 wax covered drink cups - garbage
4 plastic cup lids - recycle
2 plastic drinking straws - recycle
2 paper drinking straw covers - worms
4 small chips bags - garbage
1 paper tray liner - worms

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Re-Usable Drinking Containers

I picked these up for my kids today for their lunches. We've been using plastic ones and they were getting pretty old (we've set them aside for outside squirting fun now). They are all aluminum, don't smell, have no taste, and are leakproof. They are made by a company called Sigg in Switzerland and I know several folks who use them (they make large sizes too). Here's the kicker though - they were $17!!!!! I was shocked. The nice thing thoguh is that the larger sizes are only about $4 more so while they are expensive, at least they represent what it probably costs to make these things. The way i figure it, my kids health is worth it, if they last 10 years, they are 1.70 a year, and for others, as compared to store bought bottled water or juice boxes everyday, they're a steal.

Dave

Packaging Insanity

I ordered some tapes online for my video camera and look at what they came in. 10 tapes (they are on the right there) and 14 other pieces of stuff. Incredible. I'll give you that the plastic air bags are better than the styro-foam peanuts which end up blowing all over the place, but come on. This could have been packed in a box half it's size and used much less packaging. No wonder we're in trouble.

Everything in the pic goes into our mail area and will eventually be re-used for shipping something else, except for the tape box, which will be used to organize shot tapes.

Dave

Dirty Little Secrets

OK, I need to come clean on something here. I'm insanely addicted to Chipwich's (or any variation thereof). Now the only one's we seem to be able to get around here are Nestle Tollhouse Cookie Ice Cream Sandwich's which in my opinion, don't even come close to the goodness of Chipwich's due to the cookie to chocolate chip to ice cream ratio, which is way off. the Nestle's ones come in this horrendous plastic wrapper that can't be recycled, so, at the end of December, I had my last one, realizing that while I wouldn't go a year, I'd probably not be seeing them for a while.

Cut to today and I was in Trader Joe's and caught sight of a box of Trader Joe's Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Cookie sandwiches. I swear the lights dimmed and I heard a chorus of angels. They come in a cardboard box and are individually wrapped in thin plastic bags that are recyclable.

Now don't get me wrong, I know that I'm better off waste wise, not buying these things and I won't be buying them often, but i have to be honest, I'm psyched. I actually ate two of them before lunch (I know, I'm a child).

What can I say, we all have our vices.

Dave

Day 50 - Tuesday 2/19/08

Today's Haul:

1 macaroni and cheese box - recycle
1 macaroni and cheese cheese packet - garbage
1 can frozen orange juice - recycle
2 plastic wraps (more on these in another post) - recycle
1 toilet paper roll - worms
1 piece scrap paper - worms
1 receipt - worms
1 used q-tip - worms
2 pieces chewed gum in wrappers - garbage

Vermicomposting Group

For anyone interested in learning more about vermicomposting, there is a group you can check out at vermicomposting@yahoogroups.com. You may have to sign up for them to be part of the group but you can check out posts by searching the yahoogroups.

Also, check out Worms Eat My Garbage which is pretty much the worm bible. You can probably pick it up at the library.

Dave

Monday, February 18, 2008

Whole Foods Ditches Plastic Bags

Whole Foods announced in January that they are giving up plastic for good. As of Earth Day they will no longer offer plastic bags at all but will still offer paper for the time being. They are also presently selling these cool looking free standing bags that are made from 80% recycled plastic bottles, cost just .99 and will be replaced for free should they ever break. They're pretty hearty though so they should last a long time. When you consider that you get .5 back every time you use them (and lately they've been unofficially upping that in order to convince you it's the right thing to do), these bags will be making you money in no time. Cuhl.

A hale an hearty Huzzah to Whole Foods for boldly going where no supermarket chain has gone before.

Live Sustainably

Dave

Day 49 - Monday 2/18/08

Today's Haul:

1 plastic dishwashing detergent bottle PETE 1 - recycle
1 plastic yogurt tub with top PP 5 - recycle (re-purpose more likely)
2 pieces chewed gum in wrappers - garbage
1 piece plastic shrink wrap from tofu burger - recycled
2 pieces scrap paper - worms
1 kids birthday invite on photographic paper - garbage

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Thoughts on Week 7

Week seven had quite a few things going on. For starters, my ear is finally on the mend full time and I am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel on bills, paperwork, garbage tallying, pics, and everything else I had fallen behind on. Of course now my kids have off tomorrow and the next day (some schoolwide thing) so I won't get much done there, but otherwise I feel like I'm back on track.

The ABC news piece, which kind of came out of nowhere was pretty cool and I was quite happy with it. As they mentioned, I went with a group of school kids to Puente Hills Landfill, the largest landfill in the country, and we toured the landfill, the recycling center, and a water treatment facility there as well. To say that it was a learning opportunity is a slight understatement. I'll be posting about that as soon as i get the pics problems all sorted out.

On that note, i'm upgrading my software on my computer tonight due to a whole slew of tech problems, so if you don't hear from me for a day or two, you'll know what happened.

7 weeks in and I finally have gotten most of the shopping routine down as far as what to bring when I go (bags, tupperware, etc.) I'm not going to lie to you, it took a lot of re-training, and a bit of prep ahead of time to figure out what we are eating that week, but it's now not much more time consuming than before, possibly because it's more organized. That said, i keep on forgetting to bring egg crates back to the farmers market so we now have 4 sitting on the fridge. I haven't listed them because I'm hoping to return them to them next week as they are clean and can be re-used.

Last night (saturday night) came the thing that i knew would come up. My wife has been working 6 days a week on a deadline and she decided that she wanted to order in takeout from this place we usually get from. It gets here and I'm absolutely amazed at how much plastic is involved. Now having said that, I was fairly happy to see that they were actually quite sturdy so they will be re-purposed for art supplies and hardware stuff. We forgot to ask for no utensils (why they deliver utensils to houses is beyond me) so those are being saved for further use down the line. We also got a bunch of soy sauce packs which we'll save but unfortunately will need to be discarded when done. Anyway, bottom line is we learned what not to ask for when ordering in.

One final thing. I had to buy hand soap for the bathroom and it come sin one of those little pump jobbies. Now the old one (which we keep for projects for the girls) still works fine but I don't seem to be able to find bulk hand soap to use to fill these things up. Anyone know where you can find this stuff?

Dave

Week 7 Pictures

Things are still looking up in the basement. No significant smell at all. That said, I've decided that this week I'm going to move everything to the other side of the basement (the other 4 feet you can't see that is) and clean everything. No real reason, just paranoia about pests and bugs. I think I'll probably do that every month just as a precaution.

Added a new lightbulb and two batts to the e-waste pile. I have a call in to the e-waste people to come in and see them soon.

Garbage is still looking extremely minimal. One of the things i plan to do this week is way it and keep a tab on that. Sort of catching up to the end of the month report.

A few more bottles but nothing serious. I wish beer/soda bottles could be re-purposed easier.

Not much new in the paper/cardboard department.

Another task to tackle. I want to rearrange this somehow as it is a really poor use of space.

And finally the bag of bags which seems to be holding it's own just fine.

CNET Article

I keep on forgetting to post this but CNET ran a very cool article on me and a few other folks who are/have done similar things. As usual, the dog got top billing. It kind of amazes me how press wise this thing has taken on a life of it's own. Enjoy!

Dave

Day 48 - Sunday 2/17/08

Today's Haul:

1 business card - worms (after I put it into my computer of course)
2 pieces scrap paper - worms
1 piece bakery tissue paper - worms

I love a day like today don't you?

Day 47 - Saturday 2/16/08

Today's Haul:

2 lollipop sticks with plastic wrappers - garbage
1 beer bottle w/cap - recycling
1 cardboard beer bottle six pack - recycling
1 plastic pretzel bag - recycling
4 heavy duty plastic takeout containers - repurpose
1 heavy duty plastic bag from takeout place - repurpose

Day 46 - Friday 2/15/08

Today's Haul:

1 beer bottle w/cap - recycling
4 pieces scrap paper - worms
1 cardboard medicine box - recycle
1 paper insert from medicine box - worms
3 tissues - worms

ABC News

ABC 7 came and did a little piece on me the other day. A few weird video glitches, but otherwise a fun piece. I'm convinced that I don't look that weird in real life, but my wife disagrees.

Dave

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