The 100 Mile Diet

After a few slow months, I think we'll be very busy blogging in August. While I did actively participate in June's "Write Down 30 Things You Want to Do and Do Something Different Each Day" and July's "Contact Someone You Don't Speak to on a Regular Basis Every Day", there hasn't been too much to report. I had a few gratifying moments from each month but overall they didn't feel like too much of a challenge. I'm very excited for August which might turn out to be the biggest challenge thus far: The 100 Mile Diet.

I'm just finishing up reading, The 100 Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating, by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon which stemmed from their widely publicized blog. The philosophy is simple, the couple decided to eat only food grown and produced within a 100-mile radius of their apartment. The book chronicles their journey through this difficult but rewarding year and definitely makes you really think about where your food comes from and about the benefits of eating locally and seasonally.

Since I've become more interested in eating locally anyway, I decided that making this into a Twelve Months of Lent challenge would be perfect. Starting August 1st I'll officially be a Boston localvore.

Although I plan on being as strict as possible about this, I am going to set my own parameters to make it bearable. What I've determined so far:

1. I'm extending the 100 miles to include all of New England.

2. All produce must be grown in New England (omg, no avocados).

3. All dairy and seafood must be local.

4. I can use spices and oils that are already in my pantry.

5. Alcohol should be local but I'm not going to be fussy about where they grow their grains or grapes.

6. Bread. Oh wow, what do I do without bread? Is there a local flour source? Half of me wants to say that I can eat bread as long as I make it myself or buy it from a local bakery, but the other half wants to be really strict and say unless it's local grain then I can't have it at all. For now I'm going to try to seek out a local source and I'll cross that bridge when I get there if I can't find one.

7. I'm allowing myself 5 local-free meals, meant to be used for things like my Nana's 90th birthday party, dinner parties with friends, and times of desperation when I'm starving and nothing local can be found.


I'm sure more things will come up but for now, he's a list of resources that I've already found:

Boston Localvores Blog

Boston's Local Food Shed

Harvest Co-op

City Feed and Supply

Brattleboro Food Co-op

Boston Organics' Dogma Box

Definitely comment and share your favourite local places if you have any!

I fell off the wagon, but I'm climbing onto it again

I haven't posted in a very long time and it's because I've been doing a rather poor job of following the challenges lately. Who wants to think about failure? Not me! But I suppose I do have some things to report.

I believe my last post was in May, which was "create no trash" month. I had my first experience with composting, and it was pretty awful. I bought a little plastic scrap bucket for the kitchen and kept meaning to buy a larger bucket for my back porch but didn't get around to it for... about a month. Meanwhile, the food garbage in the scrap bucket began festering and growing black mold and other sorts of creatures. I eventually threw out the entire bucket because the contents were so heinous, there was just no going back. I finally bought a large bucket in the beginning of June and have since been composting more intelligently, with a nice ratio of green to brown matter. It's not nearly as terrifying this time around.

I did not complete June's challenge of "30 things". To date, I think I've done about 1/3 of the items on my list. When I was thinking of things to do, it was rather haphazard, and throughout June my list kept evolving. I lost interest in some items and added others halfway through the month. June also ended up being the busiest month in the history of man. I played field hockey and softball (my team won the championship, woo!), volunteered a lot, went camping/canoeing, cooked a veggie burger inside of a waffle... life was crazy. At one point I was feeling guilty about June so I spontaneously got a pedicure and had my tarot cards read. I felt worse afterward because I spent too much money and all I had to show for it were toes I could have painted myself and a fortune that said I'm going to meet my fair-skinned German soulmate in three months' time. A worthwhile June endeavor: I planted my tomato seedling that I grew from a seed. Check this beauty out:

Now July! July is contact 31 people month. I've been doing alright with this challenge which I owe largely to luck. It just so happened that a few people on my list kind of fell into my lap and I was able to see them in person without much effort at all! What a dream. I wasn't doing as well with my July list recently, but I contacted... drum roll please... six people today! Only two of them answered the phone, but hey, baby steps. I also took a nice walk today around Castle Island and bought lunch at the food hut I've been meaning to try. Cheap and tasty! I was fat and happy.

It has definitely become apparent that the most successful months are also the most challenging ones. The most rewarding times are the times where I alter my lifestyle in some way for the better (i.e. vegan detox, pick up trash, create no trash). I am therefore excited to unveil the new, improved August: consume locally month! How provocative! Danne has done a bunch of reading about the 100 Mile Diet, where you don't eat anything that has travelled farther than 100 miles to your plate, so we are going to give it a shot. I'm definitely ready for a challenge again!

Oh, and Tim and I signed up for the Mud Hog Race in New Hampshire on August 8th. It should be a blast if any of you want to come cheer us on! What is a Mud Hog Race, you ask? Why, it's a 6-mile running/biking race with a 60 foot mud pit you crawl through to get to the finish line, of course! Our team name is Check Out My Mudstache! It should be quite fun :)

The Race Is On

June hasn't been going exactly as planned. This months challenge is to write down 30 things that you want to do and do something different from the list each day. I don't know about everyone else, but June has been the busiest month of my entire life. I had to stay late a bunch of nights for work, I went to a ton of shows, my Project M application was due, my new photo class started and it's two nights a week instead of just one, etc...So, what I'm getting at is that I've barely done anything from my list.Now that things have died down a bit though, the race is on to cross as many things off as possible in the next week. Just today, I made muffins from scratch and wrote some Yelp reviews, there's two right there! A few other things from the list that I hope to get to this week:

-Play monopoly
-Do yoga
-Infuse vodka with fruit
-Finish designing Sondra's Etsy banner (i mean it this time Sondra!)
-Go to Bluegrass night at the Cantab Lounge
-Cross stitch
-Buy a Spare Change newspaper from the guy that has been selling them outside of South Station every day since I started working at Neoscape.

and you know what, I'll just keep going through the list all summer. I'm ok with taking my time for this one.

Learn from my mistake...

Do not wait 2.5 weeks to empty your kitchen compost bin, and if you do, don't open it inside the house:

COMPOST IS THE MOST VILE THING I HAVE EVER SMELLED.

Seriously, I just made this mistake and the whole first floor of my house smells like baby poop mixed with puke. Wow, sorry roommates. I have learned my lesson.

Recycling and Composting 101

I learned a whole lot yesterday about recycling and composting, and rather than expecting you to click on tons of links, I've been encouraged by Danne to write a real post. So here you go!

I read a bunch of accounts of what works and what doesn't when it comes to apartment composting, and I decided I'm sort of going to wing it. I'm putting two lidded plastic containers (perhaps trashcans) on my back porch, and a small bin in the kitchen. I'll put some holes in the bottom of the porch containers and rest them on slats in trays. Once the kitchen bin is full of scraps, I'll dump it in the first porch bin. When that's full, I'll fill the second porch bin. I'll turn the contents approximately once a week. Hopefully by the time the second bin is full, the first will be soil-ish. I'll use some of the soil for my own plants and give the rest away to... someone.

A lot more can be composted than I originally realized. You can obviously add fruit and vegetable scraps, but you can also compost bread, pasta, beans, rice, paper towels, hair, nail clippings, q-tips (not the plastic ones), dryer lint, vacuum bag fillings... The list goes on. It is advised that you don't add meat or dairy products unless you have a really successful compost pile going. These products attract pests and often cause unwanted odors. It is important to have "brown matter" in your compost as well as "green matter". Green is the food garbage. Brown is sawdust, dead leaves, grass clippings, newspaper, cardboard. The ratio should be about 60/40 green to brown. Also, in order for the waste to break down efficiently, everything should be cut in little pieces. And so begins my adventure with composting! Wish me luck!

On to recycling! So many more items can be recycled than I ever knew. This month is about avoiding the consumption of items that prove wasteful, but also figuring out how to dispose of waste properly. I found solutions for some problem items: plastic bags, lids, and #5's. Plastic grocery bags can be brought to a number of locations to be recycled, found here. You can bring other kinds of plastic bags too! These include:

• Retail bags (hard plastic and string handles removed)
• Paper towel and toilet paper plastic wrap
• Plastic newspaper bags
• Plastic dry cleaning bags
• All clean, clear bags labeled with a #2 or #4
• I read somewhere that you can include ziploc bags as long as you cut off the zipper part (that's a different type of plastic).
  

Aveda is helping to build a new recycling program for rigid plastic lids and caps. So now you should save all of those water, gatorade, soda, peanut butter, mayonaise, ketchup, shampoo, lotion, and laundry detergent caps, and bring them to your neighborhood Aveda store. And! #5 plastics are rarely recycled by local recycling centers, but Preserve's Gimme 5 program has placed bins for these hard-to-recycle but very common #5's in various Whole Foods locations. You can even recycle old Brita filters, woop woop!

I read a fun list of things you can do with cardboard boxes instead of tossing them in the recycling bin. You can make a self-composting compost bin, build an armchair, build a house, make an egg incubator to hatch chicks, or plant column gardens (Make a column with cardboard, soil, and gravel, and plant leafy vegetable seeds in slits cut in the cardboard. Your veggies grow sideways out of the vertical surface instead of straight up from the ground. Awesome!).

Reading all of this information and watching the video on Green as a Thistle inspired me to put a full water bottle in our toilet tank to save on water each flush and sort all of our recycling according to the new things I found out. We now have separate spots for lids/caps and for #5 plastics. Oh, and I joined Freecycle!

Side note about deodorant: Tom's of Maine's deodorant package is composed entirely of #5 plastic so it's recyclable (unlike most other deodorants whose dials are something that can't be recycled). Deodorant is something I'm struggling with a bit because, let's face it, I sweat a lot, so I prefer a strong antiperspirant. I have a big problem with putting those chemicals directly onto my skin every day though, so I switched to Tom's. Tom's just isn't cutting it as far as odor resistance and sweat stopping go, though. The Green as a Thistle girl said coconut oil is a great deodorant, so I might give that a try. Why not, right?

Okay, that's all of the information in my brain for now. Yay, no trash!

One last thought, please drink water and coffee out of reusable bottles and mugs. It's really just silly not to.

May's Challenge: Be Trash Free

I'm excited about this months challenge, I really am. So far the months that have been the most rewarding are the ones that are the most difficult, and not only is not making trash difficult, it's pretty much impossible. Since I work full time and am not able to go at this 150% (i.e. making my own bread to avoid food packaging) this month seems like it's mostly about consuming less, recycling or reusing everything you have to consume, and composting the rest. I already make an effort to limit my consumption (I have dishes, silverware, and hand towels at work to avoid the disposable versions), and I'm an avid recycler, but there's still a lot of questions I have, most pertaining to what can and can't be recycled. I did a bunch of research this afternoon and here are some resources that I found that will be helpful to anyone participating in this months challenge:


-First of all, a friend sent this blog to me a few months ago. I went through a good portion of it today and I definitely encourage anyone who wants to go trash free to check it out: http://notrashchallenge.blogspot.com. They have a ton of really great and informative posts.

-From that blog I came across this article that answered a lot of questions I have about recycling: http://www.realsimple.com/realsimple/content/0,21770,1835098,00.html. A few things I learned: Bottle caps (plastic and metal) are not recyclable and neither is plastic cutlery. If you try to recycle a pizza box that still has food remnants in it, it can ruin an entire recycling batch. Packing peanuts are not recyclable, but you can take them to a number of facilities that will reuse them. It seems like most anything can be recycled, but just not tossed in your recycling bin. Lots of things need to be sent to a specific facility.

-I didn't look too far into this site yet, but it seems like it could be useful:http://earth911.com/

-This blog isn't specifically about not making trash, but living more green in general: http://greenasathistle.com/

Some changes that I've made already:

-We are composting at home and I even have a container at work to put food scraps and tea bags in.

-I'm making an effort to purchase food with the least amount of packaging possible. To prepare for this month and get an idea of how much trash I produced on a regular basis, I kept a trash journal all last week. I'd say about 95% of all garbage was food related. If I were a package designer, I would be pushing my company to consider more sustainable options. Is it really necessary to sell pre-cut, individually packaged apples? Do we really need frozen pb&js?

-I'm saving things like bread bags and reusing them.

That's all for now, I'd love to hear if anyone has any great tips for reducing/reusing/recycling. I need to figure out what to do with cat litter too. Has anyone had good luck with alternative litter options?

Litter is lame! Happy No-Trash May!

I can't believe it's May already! 2009 is flying by. The fact that we have assigned a different challenge to each month probably has something to do with it. As the end of each month approaches, I start thinking about what I have to do for the next month. In most cases so far, I'm looking forward to the next challenge. May is no exception, but I must say, this task is rather daunting. No trash?! Eek!

I really really liked April. It's amazingly gross how much trash there is, and as Danne said in her most recent post, once you start looking for trash, you realize it's everyyyyywhere! I feel really awful if I pass by a piece of litter without picking it up, and this is definitely a habit I will keep up from now on. Yesterday, for the last day in April, I went to the beach in Southie and picked up as much trash as I could within a 2 block stretch. I set out to go for a long walk and pick up trash along the way, but there was so much litter, I needed to narrow my scope. As is the case pretty much everywhere I've been picking trash, the most common items were water bottles, coffee cups, beer cans, cigarette packs, scratch tickets, and lids. So many damn lids. Lids to coffee cups, soda cups, and plastic bottles. If people would only drink coffee and water out of reusable containers, we would have so much less litter.

Littering is a matter of laziness and thoughtlessness. People who litter do so because it appears to be easier to drop trash on the ground than to wait and put it in a trashcan. Or they don't want to make a mess in their car so they make a mess in the environment instead. They don't think about the consequences. I wish there was a way to make everyone collectively realize that littering is a big deal, it's harmful, and it's lame. You are a huge loser and everyone looks upon you with disdain if you litter. I mean, do these people do the same thing in their houses? Shit, the trashcan is all the way in the kitchen. I'll just drop this Dunkies cup here on the floor.

The best way to combat litter in an immediate way is to place more trashcans around the city. There's a park near my house that has only one trashcan at the far corner of it, so of course people don't want to walk across the park to throw things away. The cleanest areas of the city are the ones that have trashcans on every block (and probably also have hired help sweeping up trash). Adding trashcans would help with the grossest trash, by far, the poop bags. Ya know, plastic bags with dog poop inside? Ughhhh sick! That plastic bag is preserving that poop. The poop would be much better off in the open air where it could disintegrate and eventually wash away or decompose into the ground. If there were more trashcans, people wouldn't have to walk as far with a bag of poop in their hand, and they'd be less likely to leave it on the ground. Think about all of those poop bags out there on sidewalks and in landfills. Sick. Maybe when someone buys a dog, that scenario should be brought up. "Tell me, what would you do in this situation? Your dog shits on the sidewalk, and there are no trashcans in sight."

Sorry I just complained about dog poop for so long.

So now it's May! I'll be grocery shopping mostly at the Harvest Coop in Central Square, and I've already started a little compost pot in my kitchen (my roommates are using it as well, which is awesome). I have to figure out what the heck to do with the food scraps after that point, though. I don't have a yard for a compost bin. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Philadelphia

I really like Philly. Restaurants that give you the option to add vegan beef to your tacos, happy hour, murals everywhere, a year round indoor farmers market, great shops selling local artists work, a frozen yogurt place where you choose from a million flavors and toppings and then pay for it based on the weight, really, it's pretty cool here.

But the litter! Oh man, I've been here a number of times before, but now that my litter radar is super sensitive I'm noticing how bad it really is. I probably picked up a hundred pieces of trash so far today and that was in a two block radius. If I had stuck to my original goal of picking up every piece of trash I saw, I'd be fucked.

It's interesting because I've made some observations about the differences in the litter here compared to the litter in Boston. There's definitely just as much addictive trash (cigarette butts, empty booze bottles, coffee cups), but there's a ton of food trash here too. It really looks like people just rip open the package of everything they eat and throw it on the ground. And not only is there a ton of food trash, there's a lot of random trash. Empty lots will be filled with toilets and old tvs and other random household items. In Boston, you just don't see that. Apparently in Philly, anything goes.

Another observation I made is that there's definitely a shortage of trash cans here. In the downtown area and around the UPenn campus in West Philly where we were today, there were trash cans on every block, and in turn, less litter. In South Philly though, once you get passed South Street, it's impossible to find a trash can, and because of this (and probably a number of other reasons), there's litter everywhere. Philly needs more trash cans! Obviously everyone should take personal responsibility for the trash they create, but since this is an improbability, at least make it easy for people to throw stuff away. Even the convenience stores around here don't have trash cans in front of them. No wonder there's food trash all over the place!

I really think the root of the problem is that people just don't care. There shouldn't have to be public trash cans, if you have something you need to throw away and you don't see a trash can, bring it home with you and throw it away there. Know what I really want to know though? I always see signs on the highway that say that there's fines for littering but how often are people really penalized for it? It'd be amazing to stick a few police officers on the streets here and have them handing out citations. Maybe if it were strictly enforced people might be a little less inclined to litter. Who knows...

Litter Karma

A few weeks ago, a friend and I were picking up trash in Downtown Crossing on the way to Fajitas & Ritas. After finding the millionth losing lottery ticket on the ground in front of 7-11, we decided that the best thing to do was go in and buy one. What happened next? I WON A HUNDRED BUCKS! YES! I'm pretty sure it was litter karma rewarding me for all the trash I've been picking up all month. Win!

More later, I'm on a press check for the next two days and am trying to get some thoughts together for Delitter Bugs.

I've been picking up a lot of bad habits this month...

Thank God I don't live on Mission Hill right now. When I was in college and living in Jamaica Plain, I used to walk to MassArt along Huntington Avenue and it never ceased to amaze/disgust me how much litter covered the street in that area. Really? I mean, people really think that it's ok to just throw their trash on the ground? I can't even imagine eating fast food and then throwing my trash out the window, but people do it all the time! Why! Apparently, they've never heard of the trash vortex in the Pacific Ocean, or even worse, they have and they just don't care. Why don't people care? It's beyond me...

My ranting aside, I've actually been enjoying April's challenge much more than I thought I would. At first I felt kind of uncomfortable being seen walking around with a bunch of garbage in my hands, but pretty quickly I stopped caring. I haven't experienced any negative comments or stares, and it seems like people are more curious than anything else (although no one has stopped me to ask what I'm doing yet).

What's been really interesting is finding patterns in the litter that I pick up. The biggest conclusion I've drawn is that people with a bad habit, i.e. littering, usually have a bunch of other bad habits to go along with it. Honestly, 90% of that trash that I've found falls into the category of "Addictive Trash": empty cigarette cartons, vodka bottles, scratch tickets, and Dunkin Donuts cups. What's I've seen the most of though is cigarette butts. Somehow, there's a common misconception that tossing your cigarette butt on the ground isn't littering, but in reality, they aren't biodegradable, and even worse, two billion are thrown on the ground every day. I've already established that I'm not picking them up this month. I'd never make it anywhere on time if I stopped along the way for every one I found.

Soon I'm going to post about DeLitter Bugs, a project that Amanda and I came up with a few months ago. We're still hammering out the details so I want to wait to post until we've really figure it out. Stay tuned!