Ethical Consumerism and Green Living

[edava]

Very interested in canning. The only thing I do in the summer right now is freeze a lot of sale blueberries and strawberries for muffins, breads, and daquiries, but would love to do vegetables or tomatoes....let's hear more!  :mrgreen:

[enigmacat]

Well, my roommate is not comfortable with having worms in the house. So I'm looking for other ways to compost...

this looks interesting:

http://journeytoforever.org/compost_indoor.html

[Frappe]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070213/ap_on_sc/colombia_toxic_flowers;_ylt=AiUSXfMGccCUxWM0frWRvXRxieAA

Does this take flowers off of the green living list?

[jayme]

Greenmarket flowers!  At least more local...

[enigmacat]

you can always make origami lilies out of magazine pages. beautiful, long lasting, and reusing!

[jayme]

Green Power:

ConEd Solutions to convert to greener power -- http://conedsolutions.com/ -- I use 100% wind and conserve at home.  Bill has increased some but not astoundingly.  Good information also in the thread on astorians on green power:  http://www.astorians.com/index.php?topic=2292.0

Also Personal Kyoto will grab your monthly usage from ConEd and graph it:  http://www.personal-kyoto.org/

Here is mine:
http://www.personal-kyoto.org/energy_usage/share/101

[megc]

Personal Kyoto is cool!  I remember first hearing about it and thinking it was a great idea.

Also remember there are turbines in the East River, a project to create hydro-electric power.  I understand that if and when this project is fully installed, you'll be able to request energy from this source.  A green power plant is going up on Randall's Island, too.

I would like to see a 5 cent discount with each reusable bag you bring to the grocery store.  That's been a standard in the Bay Area for years and remember being surprised when I didn't get the 5 cents off when I brought my bags in to the supermarket when I moved to NY.  Did you know that in 2002, Ireland put a 15 cent levy on plastic bags, resulting in a 95% decrease in their use?  Impressive.  A few other stats (I get a green email in my box each day):

--Save oil and/or trees. In the US, about 12 million barrels of oil and 14 million trees go to producing plastic and paper bags each year.

--Reusing makes cents. Stores like Albertsons and Wild Oats offer a 5-penny discount if you bring your own. [yeah!]

--Make sure plastic bags don't harm sea creatures. They're one of the 12 most commonly found items in coastal cleanups. [both years I've done the shoreline cleanup in Astoria Park, lots and lots of plastic bags show up.]

[megc]

I spoke to a woman from ARROW last night at the Astoria Park meeting about donating compost, and ARROW would be able to use it.  I think you'd just have to drop it off.  I can get more details if anyone is interested.

Oh, and the coummunity garden is still there.  There will be a sort of an open house sometime this spring, where people can come down and put in a request for a space there (plots are very small but still, it's something!).  I can find further info on this if there is enough interest.

Here's the website:
http://www.arrowonline.org

Of course, the CSA (Hellgate and hopefully an additional CSA in central Astoria) in town is a great way to support local farming and sustainability.

How cool would it be to have a Farmer's Market in Astoria Park, too?  :)

[enigmacat]

oooh, my first sticky :) thanks, Jayme!

[C-J]

Great topic everyone!  I have been interested in greener living every since I started reading "An Inconvenient Truth" several months ago.  Needless to say, I only got to page three before I was so freaked out that I replaced all the lightbulbs in our house with CFL's.

Just a few comments.

Daisy - for CFL's I highly recommend the website www.efi.org.  I bought a 3-way CFL three for our living room and find that it is so bright that we leave it on the lowest setting (the equivalent of 13 watts of energy).  I noticed just now that they also have daylight bulbs which may help in your situation.  For the other rooms of the house we got some from Home Depot that were 4 bulbs for $10.  Lastly, they have nightlights that are really swell for those times you get up in the middle of the night and don't want to turn on a bunch of lights and waste the energy.  We got one with a photocell that is pretty soothing to look at as it slowly changes colours.

Jayme - for TV's I recently got a Sharp Aquos LCD that is approved (or certified, however you say it) by Energy Star.  I did a ton of research and supposedly it uses a lot less energy when in standby mode so this might be something for people to consider.  Plus, it uses a ton less energy than a Plasma screen and doesn't generate nearly that much heat.

Enigmacat - I love that you started this thread and also the idea for a fire escape garden.  I don't know if the rules have changed but when I looked into doing this several years ago (when I had a fire escape) I was told by the City that you can't have plants on fire escapes as it blocks them in case of an emergency.  If you find out that this has changed or anything about how to have flower boxes (the regulations, etc) I'd love to know as I'd like to put in a couple in our kitchen.

It's so refreshing to see such like minded people in this community.  Reaffirms for the gazillionth time why I have enjoyed living in Astoria for the past 10 years!

[C-J]

One last thing...

The other night on the N we saw a guy with bags from a fairly new place called "Really Cool Foods."  I checked it out last night and they have all organic/antibiotic free foods.  Some are prepared or you can buy ingredients to make your own recipes.  Naturally, it's a little more expensive than you would find in Key Food given that it's organic but I thought they had a nice selection.

Even though it's not in Astoria, it's less than two blocks from the Third Avenue Entrance at 60th Street (the store is between 62nd/63rd on the East side of the street) and is definitely worth checking out.  From what I can tell everything comes from Syosset so it helps to support the local people until the CSA picks back up.

[enigmacat]

very cool! i will have to check it out...

[jayme]

RE CFL's --

I replaced mine last year after some skepticism and prodding.  I am light *snob* but I've found them to be warm, non buzzy, and pleasant.  I did even manage to find one decorative style globe for a hanging lamp with exposed bulb -- but this light does take a bit to warm up and give off full light.  Part of the trick to converting is to buy the appropriate number of lumens.

FAQ here: 

http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=cfls.pr_cfls


RE TV --

I've chosen to go TV free and enjoy the peace a quiet.  It wasn't an energy saving decision at the time but I have been amazed at how much the lack of television has influenced my buying habits.  Not being innundated with advertising has had a great effect on what I want vs what I "need" vs what I buy.  I also love the quiet of my apartment now.

I *do* watch TV online sometimes though and rent DVDs to play on my laptop (sometimes of past season's television shows). 

Energy efficient models are good though!  I hadn't even though of how much energy a plasma could suck up. 

[enigmacat]

I was TV free for a while about a year and a half ago. I had thought about unplugging for a while but thought I would really miss it. Then my TV went on the fritz and I was surprised at how little I missed it.

My roommate and I have talked about parking it in the closet but I kind of doubt we will.

[wasabisam]

We got rid of our TV about a year ago maybe (?) and it was Jayme-inspired I have to say. :) We really don't miss it, although I had a really hard time giving in to the idea of losing it. Like Jayme, we do watch things on the Internet. We have a subscription to CNN Pipeline for news, and we watch YouTube and the like for clips and whatnot. We also are members of Peerflix so we watch movies on occasion. I'd say that the most that I typically watch on the Internet amounts to about half an hour a day, sometimes less, sometimes more.

It really does make a difference to not have a TV. When I'm in a place where I can watch TV (hotels or other people's houses) I find that I can't watch for very long. When we were at my mom's for Christmas I'd watch for a bit and then just turn it off, whereas before it would just stay on whether I was watching or not.

We're also quite busy now that we don't have a TV. You wind up "getting around to" lots of things as well as taking on new and interesting projects - like gardening and composting and recycling and shopping at thrift stores and and and....  :-D