Fueling Up the Smart Way

My grandma and I were making a trip out to Ohio yesterday when I stopped at Get Go to fill up one of our Audis with her Fuel Perks.  Get Go and Sheetz have always had my admiration for how they create savings for customers as a way to keep business in their favor.  With fuel prices always rising and falling, saving at the pump regardless of the prices is an attractive choice.  I’ve long given up watching the fuel prices and accepted that driving a car with Premium petrol requirements and fueling up at competitive stores with competitive prices is always going to leave me paying a hefty bill.  I’ve also driven enough in Europe to realize our fuel prices are – relatively speaking – outrageously low, even in California.  Still, how to maximize your dollar at the pump?

First, let me just say: I am actually a fan of rising gas prices.  Before you grumble too much, consider what these prices are implying: Sure, you can argue it’s the oil industry being the king that it is and taking what it can from the common people.  But doesn’t it also come down to demand?  Not only do prices rise when we keep burning up gas at higher rates than we usually consume and/or extract it, but the prices are able to rise with our increased dependency on fuel.  I think it should cost an arm and a leg to fill up your car.  That’s a tiny sacrifice we make for a life of luxury that we don’t deserve and which is in turn destroying the planet.  So let the oil giants live like kings for the time being.  Their luxuries are short-lived, but also their investment in the business is incredibly genius.  They benefit from our dependency, stupidity, and greed as a society.  That makes them no less of a criminal than all of the other enterprises that thrive off of society’s demands.

But let’s talk about saving money.  Part of that comes from making good choices for the environment, too.  Sure, sometimes the green solution is the more expensive solution – but it’s the right solution.  And it doesn’t always have to be more expensive.  Sometimes it’s a matter of living with less, or just knowing how to spend less.

First, I am notorious for my miraculously low to non-existant electric and gas bills at my apartments in Cleveland.  How do I do it?  By living the same why I live in the country in Pennsylvania.  For the life of me, I don’t understand why city people drive as much as they do.  They have public transportation AND you can find five of the same stores within a five mile walk!  You’d be lucky to find a house that close to where I live, let alone a sole store… but we still make do!  Furthermore, city folk are all about working out.  They pay for gym memberships, drive the the gym, then do the same work that they could do if they made better lifestyle choices on a daily basis.  Talk about hypocrisy!

So how do I keep up my country, fuel-efficient, healthy ways in the city?  First of all, I always pick do-it-yourself before anything else.  Without a question, you can guarantee I walk up every flight of steps, walk to any store within a predefined radius, carry my own groceries in reusable bags, buy only what I need as I need it, buy things that are not only made or grown locally but that belong in the local climate, and I let the outdoors dictate my indoor climate as much as I can.  That means I open and close windows during the summer to utilize the cool night air and the breeze without the need of fans or air conditioning, and in the winter I seal my place up and keep it as cold as I like.  If you’re going to spend money on sweaters and socks, you might as well use them!  I hate artificial lighting, and if you’re going to have a place with windows that let heat escape, well you might as well use those too!  I do everything by natural light, save for some moments when I light candles or do turn on the electricity.

I cook my own meals from scratch and I grow most of my ingredients or harvest them from the patches of woods I find around Cleveland.  I am appalled that there are people in Cleveland who have asked me, “Wait, what’s compost?  You do that?”  I know down to the cents per kilowatt how much energy I’m using and I maximize this energy as much as possible.  If I’m making tea, I’ll use the steam off of the hot water to heat something else.  If I’m baking, I’ll use the cooling oven to reheat other things or just let it dissipate to heat my room or even my socks before bed.  I’d use a wood fire to cook in Cleveland if I could.  Also, I prefer to take baths rather than showers.  This allows me to run less water (although water is fairly recyclable in urban settings).  After my bath, I use the water to hand-scrub my clothes which then hang to dry on my drying rack.  I dream of the day that I can run all of my products off of a self-installed solar panel array.  I also think bikes are one of the best inventions of all time.

But this doesn’t answer the question of how to save money when I’ve gotta roll out my Audi and drive somewhere, like when neither a bike nor public transportation are suitable to haul my large hockey bag across seven states for my indulging in sports.  This is when I invest in Sheetz and Get Go.  Back to the pump at Get Go: I’m filling up only half of a tank on my grandma’s 50-cents-off-per-gallon discount and thinking, What a waste.  But my grandma is very particular about not letting the gauge go down too far and I know I’ve got to use it or she will complain.  Still, 50 cents off on only eight or so gallons?  I turned around to see a family with a huge truck tanking up, then unloading small gas cans and filling those too.  You’re not supposed to do that because that’s how you’ll make the system bankrupt, but they do it anyway.  Alas, my everlasting internal battle: social honesty or environmental responsibility?  I’d have to choose the honesty here.  I couldn’t milk a bargain that way without feeling guilt for how I was jeopardizing a widely-welcomed system.

However, filling up your truck – that is fair game and it’s a smart move.  I’m used to using Fuel Perks on my GMC pick-up truck, all 20-some gallons of it.  That’s why my tiny eight-gallon fill-up felt particularly illogical next to the F150 two pumps over.  But then I started recalling warnings from my parents about not using the Fuel Perks until a lot has been saved up and I realized that’s only true in a certain regard.  Honestly, you’re going to save the same amount of money regardless of the discount, right?  That’s just it, though: it’s a rate.  The rate may be the same, but your purchase size is what affects your savings.  So no matter if you’re saving 20 cents on a eight gallon fill-up or 40 cents on a 16 gallon fill-up, you’re saving the same amount despite the different rates.  What my parents were really trying to tell me is save up a lot of savings… then make a big purchase.  In other words, we rack up savings here and there, then buy a large quantity of fuel to expire our savings.  My little fill-up used up those savings on an unjustifiably small (if you’re not my grandma) quantity of fuel.

So do some math, weigh your values, and take the effort to do what’s right for your wallet – and the environment.  The point of this entry is really just to get you thinking about your daily choices and how it’s affecting your health, your planet, and your wallet in different proportions.

I like local, but local sometimes local is the wrong answer.

Yup.  That’s pretty much all there is to it.  For all of you “go local!” buffs, the ones totally obsessed with this new trend, first of all, WOAH.  Going “local” is NOT some new trend, people!  Local is the way we evolved!!  Do you think cavemen imported food?  How about frontiersmen?  Yeah, local is a way of life, so get over yourselves…

But local isn’t always good.  In fact, sometimes it’s bad for the environment.  Ever thought of that?  It’s a pretty simple concept.  The first step in realizing the fault in locavore lifestyle is acknowledging the unrealistic demands today’s food industry.  Back when we were a naturally locavore society and didn’t have the option of importing goods, we ate what was available when it was available.  That means eating melons in the summer, roots in the winter, and there’s nothing wrong with that…we still do that.  The problem is, now, we also expect other crops to be there.  Crops that aren’t supposed to be there.  But now that we have the technological ability to grow them, we will.  And we’ll do it locally.  So it’s locavore food…or is it??

I vote, NO.  Just because a food is grown locally, that doesn’t mean it’s locavore.  Although “locavore” is supposed to include locally grown foods, I think classifying it as such misses the point.  LOCAVORE means LOCAL because LOCAL is SUSTAINABLE.  So locavore is really sustainable.  Nothing else.  Locality is just a vehicle of this sustainability.  So what’s my point?  Well, do you really think growing a non-winter crop in a greenhouse during the winter is sustainable?  Maybe it’s being grown on a local farm, but does that mean its energy expenditure is valid??   No way!

Here’s an example:  A study has shown that “it can be more sustainable (at least in energy efficiency terms) to import tomatoes from Spain than to produce them in heated greenhouses in the UK outside the summer months”, according to a food mile study.  I think this sums up my point well.  Truly eating sustainably means getting rid of fresh fruits in the winter, and in fact ditching a lot of the crops that we eat out of season.  Thinking about this, I realize how unsustainable a lot of Farmer’s Markets crops are if they’re not actually produced in fields and are instead closely monitored in greenhouses and watered frequently.  I now realize that scrutinizing a company for importing goods is not necessarily worse.  Maybe those pineapples came from Hawai’i, but just imagine the energy expenditures had we grown them here?

What’s my point?  Just this: If you want to eat sustainably, don’t focus so much on “local” as being a matter of “distance”.  Realize that “local” really means being locally available.  Eat seasonally.  That’s what makes the real difference.  Think about that the next time you make a grocery list, and consider growing your own food.  Cheers.

The Unprecedented Reverse Psychological Effect of Earth Day

Earth Day was created in 1970 to increase environmental awareness and spark interest in the population to heal the world’s health problems. It is one of my least favorite celebrations because I believe it is ineffective and almost counterproductive.

Picture on my run in Cleveland this weekend.

To me, every day is Earth Day. Every choice I make has been done with preconceived intention and consequence. I operate on a level of mutual respect for my surroundings and nature. I ethically cannot violate this respect; thus I have no need for a celebratory day with events within driving distance or farther for me to demonstrate my good intentions. Each breath I take resonates my purpose.

I do not doubt that Earth Day had held its significance in environmental education; but with the turning of the tide in this new ages Green Revolution, dedicating a sole day to volunteering, clean-up, environmental education, and vegan potlucks seem to miss the point and enable us to accept this “holiday” as our only “work day”. The same things demonstrated on Earth Day should, in reality, be incorporated in every intention of our daily lives and in every classroom within the American education system. Instead, we drive ourselves to an Earth Day event, commit a few lazy hours to picking up litter (which is more of an aesthetic concern than environmental), and then indulge in bowls of food that 9 times out of 10 contain imported, genetically modified, or otherwise unnatural ingredients somewhere within the depths of the dish. Then April 23rd comes around and it’s back to factory beef, taking out the trash, and watching sports on our televisions.

Earth Day should be more of a day of reflexion. “Look how far we have come since last Earth Day” with numbers ensuing for proof. Rather, local events I see for Earth Day fail to carry this message. The unprecedented result has thus been to instill in the minds of the youth that today we remember the planet, and then tomorrow they will remember their video games. In dedicating one day of the year to our cause, we have dedicated 364 to 365 of the off-days to ordinary lifestyles. This doesn’t mean we should make the Anti-Earth Day and dedicate one day to slacking…or should we? Talk about reverse psychology.

So, rather than ask what you will be doing for Earth Day, what will you be doing 6 months from now for your planet? What about every other day in between?

Emerald: Color of the Year

 

(Pinterest) Emerald, Peacock, whatever…

I know you have all been holding your breath… but it’s old news now.  Of course you’ve heard.  Pantone has declared Emerald 17-5641 as the Color of the Year for 2013.  (Don’t mess up the numbers!  You wouldn’t want to have the wrong shade of Emerald Green!  The Wizard of Oz might come after you if you offend him…)

(Pinterest)

REALITY, people.

So I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a “Color of the Year” until I walked into Beachwood Mall yesterday and saw it plastered all over the makeup advertisements.  I guess I don’t use makeup as a crutch, so I wouldn’t know.  Pardon my cynicism, but this whole thing truly irks me.  I don’t post on this blog often, but I’m sure you might guess by now (if you follow) that I’m not exactly partial to the fashion industry.  In other words, I think it’s a crock of baloney.  I’m a naturalist… since when does the planet become controlled by the fashion industry?  By a silly human past-time in a world of creatures with more glamor in their natural decor than we could ever replicate without wearing their very furs themselves?

 

(Pinterest)

Who the hell is Pantone anyway?  Oh, a printing company.  That makes sense.  I remember reading on some prehistoric stone plaques defining the creation of this planet that Pantone was declared the ambassador of artificial color trends for each human-observed cycle of that big Sun star around our little rock.  Naturally, I panicked and stocked my closet full of the color.  I couldn’t imagine looking out of style!!!

No, but really… the shit was on sale, and green is one of my favorite colors.  H&M and CVS stocked me as far as I plan to stock:

 

 

 

 

Don’t forget your ruby slippers!  Pretty sure that’s a requirement this year as well.

 

Shopping with a Conscience.

Do you ever feel guilty buying certain things at the store?  There are three things that really get me:

1. Out-of-season foods.
It’s hard to eat healthy and local at the same time without boring your tastebuds to death.  I just spent the last 5 weeks in Africa where I witnessed this isn’t a problem: people have the freshest, sweetest fruits I’ve ever tasted growing at their fingertips year round.  In Cleveland, however, healthy and local aren’t commonplace during the long winter months.  Unless you want to eat cabbage and broccoli all winter, you can plan on buying imported fruits.  I first came to this realization when one day I thought, I don’t eat enough fruit; I should buy some apples.  But apples don’t naturally grow here in the winter.  Was eating an apple really worth supporting the industry of shipping exotic foods from afar all year round just to satisfy my palate?  No.  How could I get around this?  Better planning.  Next year, I should take advantage of abundant apples and other fruits growing locally and then learn to can them with spices!  Mmmmm.  Or even make pies and freeze them.  Too bad others don’t feel this way.  We only encourage such out-of-season deliveries by buying and creating a demand for more.

2. Chemicals.
After several classes about environmentalism and policies, Silent Spring attaches itself to every thought I have of store-bought chemicals.  Although I personally refuse to buy and use chemical herbicides, insecticides, and most household cleaning products, I am aware that I still buy and use things that are not very environmentally-friendly.  For example, my drains got extremely clogged last year and my mom bought me a bottle of Drain-O which I reluctantly applied.  Or how about something as simple as acetone to take off nail polish?  Or even nail polish itself?  Air fresheners in aeresol cans?  Even buying plastic zip-lock bags falls into this category for me – an evil necessity that, quite frankly, isn’t necessary at all but we convince ourselves that it is.

3. Plastic amenities.
My chemical fears continue in this category.  I don’t just mean plastic bags, but plastic utensils and kitchen items.  I buy glass mason jars and use them for everything as much as I can.  My friends make fun of me for traveling with mason jars instead of snack bags, but I feel like a much better person for using them.  But where plastic really irks me is in the kitchen itself.  I love to cook, and the thought of flipping on an oven instead of lighting a fireplace bothers me enough already.  I do everything within my power to avoid plastic spatulas, plastic cups, plastic bowls, plastic anything!  This theme continues into my housework where I strive to buy metal brooms instead of plastic sweepers.   I work overtime to avoid electricity use.  I even do a lot of my laundry by hand in my bath water after I’ve taken a bath.  My friends think this is crazy, but I argue it’s much simpler than going to the Laundromat.  And I dread the day that I have my own house and contemplate my need for washing units of my own.  What wastes!  But when it comes to appliances, I always put in the extra money for that metal toaster or metal blender with the hopes that it will last longer, will degrade better, and was better for the environment to be produced.  Besides, metal appliances are so much classier!

Maybe it’s just me – and maybe it shouldn’t be just me – but buying certain things in the store send me reeling on a guilt trip.  Are there any things in particular that bother you?  I mean, most of us break down and buy a car at some point, which is bad enough, but what about the little nagging things?  Like imported goods and plastic, plastic, plastic?

Maybe, one day, we won’t have to make environmentally-conscience decisions every time we shop.  Maybe they’ll be the only option!

Land Ethics – Something Not To Be Underrug Swept

I am studying Civil Engineering, but I am specializing in the “Environmental Geotechnical” subdivision of the broad CivE field.  For this reason, one of my classes this semester is Environmental Geology.  I thought it would be a boring class about rocks, but it really isn’t.  Despite my preconceived notions, I ordered all of my text books months in advance and have since kept up on the reading.  I wish more students could delve into these materials as seriously because I am surprised by how relevant every topic really is.  I keep recalling these Indian proverbs recited in my family (Native American, albeit in French) about how life is one fragile web; what happens to one thread happens to all.  The expression fits this class perfectly.

Just within the first chapter, I was pummeled with scientifical points and pointed fingers.  The author of my “Introduction to Environmental Geology” book, Edward A. Keller, begins his book with “Concept One: Human Population Growth… The number-one environmental problem is the increase in human population”.  True or not true?  It is clearly his opinion, but he supports it well.  He talks about the “population bomb”, where exponential growth in our population explodes our numbers… and how our flocking to concentrated areas rather than pioneering and exploring has cornered us and subjected us to natural disasters.  My mother would argue that disasters, famine, disease, etc. are all mechanisms of the planet to balance itself out.  Now that we have improved technologies, agriculture, and medicine that extends our lifetimes significantly (and thereby affecting our population numbers in one stillframe), these disasters are merely keeping us in order.

But Keller takes this to another level.  He argues that “some studies suggest that the present population is already above a comfortable carrying capacity for the planet” (16), just pages before he explains the likelihood that Earth will outlive us by billions of years.  He constantly reiterates how short our time on this planet has been relative to the Earth’s age, and it’s a matter of hours around New Year’s after a whole year has passed before our arrival.  By page 18, Keller is essentially arguing that the Earth is not in danger.  We are in danger, some of the wildlife is likely affected by us and therefore in danger, but the planet keeps on apathetically turning.  Remember, this is a geology book, so plate techtonics, physical and chemical composition – none of that will change.  However, if we keep feeding the gases into the atmosphere that cause changes in the climate and the cold front patterns, the planet will naturally balance that with its ever-changing topography and natural disasters.  What Keller is trying to say is as simple as this: Don’t fix the planet, because it will balance itself out regardless; instead, view environmentalism as monitoring the Earth for the sole purpose of saving ourselves.

This brings me to “land ethics”, introduced on page 33.  It’s interesting how many people I know will go through their lives not thinking a second about the environment.  They’ll buy what they want to buy, drive where they want to drive, and not blink at all at the looming threat of a planetary disaster.  It’s people like these who do not invest in the vavlues of land ethics.  These ethics declare humans responsible, through their actions as citizens to this planet, for all other humans as well as the flora, the fauna, the ground, the water, and the air.  Believing in a land ethic means you agree that “we are the land’s citizens and protectors, not its conquerors”, that “this role change requires us to rever, love, and protect our land rather than allow economics to determine land use” (33), which it so often does.  This is no “hippie” notion – this is purely being responsible.

It sickens me that notions such as land ethics have such a classy, hippie, cool appeal.  Trigger words should instead include survival, necessity, and catastrophe prevention.  We are “blessed” enough to live in this era which teeters on the brink of some serious global crises.  Granted, these crises may only exist for our race, for our species, because the Earth will move on without us.  But, if we want to invest in the safe future of our offspring, we should concern ourselves less with economic survival and acknowledge the big picture.  We might all have our internal disputes, even those between nations, but what are those really to the planet as a whole?  They’re petty things.  The ONE THING that this entire planet should be able to agree on in the IMMEDIATE NEED to preserve a place for our children to live.  Other planets may not be a solution, and if we can’t fix our problems here then we will be certainly ill-equipped to take on an entirely new and foreign system.

The planet really is a fragile web.  However, it can rebuild itself.  Mother Earth a.k.a. Gaia is one crafty spider, and we are merely insects she’s got saved aside for later in her web.  It’s about time every human realizes he cannot live here for free, that he is indebted to his environment for eternity.  We might have fancy technology, but Mother Earth’s power will always overcome us in the end.  What makes us any different than the dinosaurs or any other mammal subjected to the same environment as we?  Have a conscience – it just might save your life.

P.S. Did you know?  Not only does the Earth’s techtonic plates, through their convergence, divergence, subduction, etc. dictate our living conditions on the surface, but the planet’s shape controls our climate.  Ever wondered why the equitorial jungles are surrounded by deserts?  It has to do with hot air collecting and dumping its burdening water content at the Equator, then its recycling away from the Equator in arid gusts that steal away any moisture in the deserts.  This is one of the many ways Mother Earth balances herself out and decides how we live.

Urban Gardening

I’m from the country.  My family, like most, rarely buys a lot of produce from the grocery stores.  Most of use grow our own produce.  When we are short on something – or if we simply don’t grow it – we trade with surrounding farms.  For example, my land grows a lot of blackberries, but this old man down the lane has his own cherry tree.  We swap fruits to make pies quite often.  Right next to that man is a sweet corn farm with the best corn I have ever had – much better than our own grown-in-poor-top-soil, small corn.  That we pay for with cash and there is always a crowd.  And the farmer’s market?  Biggest event I’ve ever seen.  It’s more of a trading post than a market.  But at home, even meats and eggs are obtained differently.  A lot of people have their own chickens and their own eggs; my family can’t keep chickens with our coyote problem, so we sometimes swap hot peppers or pattypan squash – our best crops – in exchange for a dozen.  In the fall, our swap becomes homemade applesauce or pear dumplings from our orchard.  Meats?  Well, most everything we have is venison, pheasant, or salmon – things we hunted and cleaned ourselves.

That’s what I grew up to know.  Now that I live in Cleveland, my world is has been flipped completely upside-down.  The people beside me grow tomatoes in pots.  They bought the tomatoes at a store.  I just don’t get it!!!  At home, we start everything from seed in our greenhouse then transplant things.  And it’s not uncommon for us to haul buckets of water when the well goes dry or when our only hose is tangled over a few acres in the other direction.  No, in Cleveland, I got in trouble for planting corn.  I planted some flowers and the groundskeeper ripped them out.  I was made fun of for growing plants.  I was beside myself.  Other people had flowers, but apparently my grow-yourself-dinner concept was some taboo “hippie” notion to the man next door.  Unbelievable.

Looking at Cleveland – or any city at all – makes me a little sick inside.  I think of all that asphalt, all the buildings which have destroyed greenspace and plastered it with an impenetrable cover.  In fact, it is this exact disgust that got me into Civil/Environmental Engineering.  It started in 9th grade when my friend made a speech about her grandmother being an architect.  Apparently she designs a lot of green roofs.  Green roofs!  The perfect solution to replacing what a building has destroyed, assuming that your building doesn’t taper and that your roof is the same surface area as your foundation.  Green roofs are simply roofs made into gardens.  They can be somewhat complex, however, because you have to plan for soil depths and how to deal with drainage and root penetration on your roof materials.  Here are some pictures of green roofs in existence today:

Chicago

Portland

Dearborn

When I was on a design team last year, my group got to redesign a building on campus in Cleveland.  I submitted a design for the roof that included greenspace, walkways, and even a greenhouse!  The building is very close to our campus wind turbine, so I included anemometers and other weather testing equipment that would be useful for scientific study.  I also proposed that the greenhouse be used for biological and pharmaceudical research, and that tests be done on growing different kinds of plants under different roof conditions.  Here is a shot of my roof:

But back to the guy next door who reported my corn-growing to my landlord: I decided he had no business calling me out, but that maybe I wouldn’t plant in the front yard anymore.  Instead, I took a look at the back of the building.  There is no grass at the back – it is completely asphalt.  We park on it, but there is a section behind the garage that is completely useless.  No car can go in and out of it, yet it’s paved over.  Gross.

I found the solution, though.  Why not make raised beds?  It’s the same idea as a green roof, but on the ground.  So I went and bought several planks of wood, nails, and tools.  I decided to do it the hard way and used handtools only.  I used a hand saw to cut through several boards, then nailed the boards to form two rectangular frames.  My brother suggested that I line them to trap the soil, so I bought landscaping mesh, hand-stitched pieces to form a wide enough swath, then used pushpins to tack in the lining.  I filled the boxes with a mix of peat moss, top soil, and manure, then added some moisture beads (because being over asphalt would make the beds a lot hotter and drier).

I started a lot of seeds inside during March, April, and May.  It was a tough year to start this experiment because we had snow and frost clear into May.  Nonetheless, I got a lot of things to come up from seed.  When it was time to transplant or directly sow the seeds, I took them outside.  Here is what managed to survive the weather on my first attempts…

This is my backyard garden, cleverly utilizing the useless asphalt space:

This is the left garden up-close:

This is the right garden up-close (with some basil plants on a salvaged milk crate):

Here are some storage blocks I salvaged from the trash, anchored with zipties, and used to hold some of my basil plants:

I planted broccoli and brussel sprouts together, but the rain off the roof blasted the seeds out of the ground.  I think only the broccoli took seed – and it’s kind of scattered.  But the cabbage moth likes it!:

I love portulacas, so I planted them and some poppies (which bloomed out already):

Marigolds have natural pesticidal properties.  We used to use them on the organic farm I worked for last year (Squire Valleevue, CWRU).  I planted seeds throughout my garden:

The sunflowers in the back will give nice blooms and then seeds in a short time:

They also provide stalks for my green beans, planted in a pot balanced on the frame, to grow up on:

My peas are taking over the ground of the right bed:

I planted cucumbers in two hanging baskets, then hung them on the fence behind the garden to vine:

My tomatoes didn’t do very well and only one plant survived, but here it is in a pot:

My peppers most certainly did the best.  I started bell and a hot variety pack from seed, and I’m just now learning which ones I have.  Look like anaheim, cayenne, and… we will see!:

Yesterday, I harvested three anaheim peppers and some fresh basil.  I bought a few more ingredients from the local market and made vegan (and gluten-free) stuffed peppers.  ( For more on my recipe, read my post at http://heartsmartandpennywise.wordpress.com/2012/08/20/vegan-stuffed-peppers )

I had tried to grow a lot of herbs and was going to barter with them.  Sadly, they didn’t do very well.  It’s difficult to keep everything watered.  Obviously, the plants in my asphalt garden need to like full sun… but I still planted things that prefer shade.  Those I put on my porch.  Check it out:

My hanging baskets are just for looks.  I planted some begonias and salvia.  The salvia are doing especially well:

Unfortunately, I went on vacation for about a week and my plants didn’t get watered.  When I left, they were thriving.  I came back to find most of them dead (like my parsley and lavender) or almost dead (like my vegetables).  My beets are doing okay:

But my radishes are clinging on to life:

And my carrots are… well they grew so well and now they’re all dried up and dead:

My lettuce has been very frustrating… I planted seeds about three times now.  I see the problem, though.  There are bugs eating them!  The devils were crawling over the soil when I took the picture:

I love bleeding hearts, but my plant only had one flower this year.  It’s not doing the best.  Hard to keep them watered enough:

These are the cute little pots I tried growing my lavender seeds in:

I put up a string of lights for atmosphere to go along with my windchimes, unvisited hummingbird feeder, and solar-powered butterfly light (which you can see in the picture of my porch above):

Not a complete success… but certainly not a failure!  This project gives me something to do and makes me feel good about living in a city.  More people should get involved in urban gardening!!!  Soon I hope to dedicate a page or whole blog to Cleveland: restaurant reviews, farmers markets, and green projects.  Speaking of which…

There are more ways to be chic in the city than just urban gardening.  For example, check out http://www.freshwatercleveland.com/features/furniture111110.aspx to read more about this chopping block I have:

This block is made from recycled wood!  I was given this by a Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA) studen who lived with me last summer.  I’ll have to write about recycling efforts in Cleveland with another entry.  Cool stuff!

Hope you enjoyed this.

Catch 22: How Improving Our Country Would Cripple Us

America – it has its flaws and we know it.  Poverty, pollution, outsourcing, topics ranging from global political issues to internal ethical controversies.  But what if solving these problems only introduces an epidemic of fresh complications?  I have reason to believe that it might.

Here’s an unlikely example: corn.

While I researching how questionable corn is for our health as a new topic in my other blog (heartsmartandpennywise.wordpress.com), my mind began imagining how to solve our country’s problems.  The thing about corn is it’s in pretty much everything in America.  Just watch the movie The Informant and you’ll get the idea.  Not only do we eat corn as corn, we eat it as sucrose, high-fructose corn syrup, corn starch, corn-fed animals,… We rely heavily on corn.  Come a draught or epidemic big enough to wipe out a portion of our corn and the price of everything is going to skyrocket.  We won’t know what to do with ourselves.  Another factor to this problem is that about 80% of corn is genetically modified.  (I say 80 because I saw a stat that indicates 20% of corn demand is for organic kinds.)  Not only is corn already difficult for our bodies to digest and a nutritional wasteland, but genetic modifiers accelerate corn’s negative effect on our health.

So now you know about corn.  You know we rely too much on it and it is affecting our health.  But how would we solve these problems?  Here are my initial thoughts – and the points at which I realized the Catch 22’s:

1. Stop using so much corn.  Seems like a no-brainer.  We eliminate corn products and then we don’t need to rely on it so much.  Besides, it’s better to spread our dependencies around to different crops so that, in the event of a blight or other tragedy, we don’t lose absolutely everything in one swipe.  The problem: Why should companies eliminate corn?  It’s cheap, it does its purpose, it’s versatile.  There is no motivation to change it… unless the FDA steps in a changes regulations.  That’s a whole mess of controversies and complaints, of time and energy to actually follow through, etc.  Products everywhere would be changing ingredients, tastes, costs, allergy warnings, calorie counts.  Farmers with tons of corn crops would have suddenly a dramatic demand decrease and would have to change crops.  But not all soil is suitable for all crops, and there’s the whole crop rotation issue to factor in.  Corn pretty much strips soil of nitrogen, and each crop has its own soil demands.  So maybe stopping using corn – at least all at once – isn’t the quick fix solution?

2. Ban genetic modifiers.  There’s so much internal controversy over the health and environmental effects of genetic modifiers as it is.  The problem: No genetic modification means more organic crops.  Organic crops are more expensive and the FDA would keep farmers under strict regulation.  Not only this, but organic crops would yield less and smaller crops, so the volume of what would be produced would be insufficient and require more land to produce enough.  One plus might be that these demands means increased price which might in turn cause the demands to go down, but that isn’t want a farmer wants to hear, even if that means less product would end up going to waste in the end.  However, no genetic modifiers would likely affect the shelf-life of produce, thereby increasing the transportation demand which is already a problem in this country.  By improving one environmental issue, we’d introduce another.

This same thought process can be applied to a number of situations.  Like poverty.  If we could actually spread the wealth so that everyone was happy (which they inadvertently wouldn’t be anyway), it is the error of humans being vain humans that would lead to a collapse.  There is a disparage in the wealth for a reason, I believe, and it’s like the expression: “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day.  Teach a man how to fish, feed him for life.”  Maybe this is a highly Republican viewpoint, but I think it is applicable.  I also think the Communism is wonderful concept, it’s just that humans are too greedy and corrupt by nature to be equally committed to making it work.  It is in our nature to want to come out on top.  It’s called survival, as trivial as a thing that may seem in modern society.  Hand-outs seem like a quick fix, putting heavier taxes on the wealthier temporarily smoothes out some intrinsic problems, but, in the long run, the equilibrium will balance itself back out.  These “fixes” will only aggravate the system.

This “Catch 22” theme also applies to my previous post on LEED certification, where we do more environmental damages in the long run to prove that we tried to care about “going green”.  Now that we’ve entered this energy-dominated era, there is little hope for turning back.  There are so many things to fix that, honestly, I feel like we will have buried ourselves before we can ever hope to get back out.  You can only have so many cracks in your windshield before you realize they’re running and you can’t see anymore.

I can’t take credit for writing a particularly organized post because, I’ll admit, this has become somewhat of a rant.  But I guess this is a blog and not an article.  Hopefully my point-of-view sparks some thoughts for whoever might read this.  I genuinely do believe America is in quite a jam – or, at least, is heading into one quite quickly – and that it’s going to take a lot of hard work to clean it up before it falls apart.

 

LEED Certification: The Snobby Solution to Looking Better than You Are

I go to Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio where our most prized, novel building is the new North Residential Village complex on the north end of campus.  This Hogwarts-esque monstrosity replaced maybe half of the sub-par dormitory units on that side of campus, which houses pretty much everyone but sophomores and Greeks.  It also serves a dual purpose as a sports and event facility, surrounding with bleachers on one side a 400m track which encloses an Astro-turf football field.  The general effect of the NRV when you see it is, “Wow, that’s a really freaking big building…”

When I first saw the NRV, I thought A) waste of money, B) waste of energy, and C) only here to impress prospective students, I mean, parents with wallets.  I was taken aback when I first learned that the NRV was actually designed and built so that it earned LEED silver certification.  On closer inspection, you can see the signs in every window bragging about this achievement.  You realize the lights tend to shut themselves off and on by a trigger.  And, in the case of my one friend’s room, you can feel how sometimes the air conditioning just doesn’t work properly… anymore.

So… what exactly is this LEED certification and why do people invest in it so much?  Being in environmental engineering through the Civil department at Case, this topic obviously intrigues me.  If you’re interested too, then here’s me breaking it down… and telling you what I really feel about it:

Green Certification
LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.  It is perhaps the most popular of several green building certifications, a standard by which to award projects recognition for their supposed environmental-friendliness.  The projects can be new or major renovations to existing buildings.  LEED attempts to market sustainable buildings by convincing prospective builders that, although sustainable buildings may seem more expensive to build than the buildings following common code (although they don’t have to be more expensive), the energy efficiency of the building over time with cause the builder to save considerably.  In theory, it is a win-win situation: green and profitable.

How the System Works
LEED awards points through a pre-determined system that can award a project up to 100 points, like an exam at school.  You only need 40-49 points to be “certified”, 50-59 to be “silver” (like the NRV), 60-79 is the larger span that awards “gold”, and 80 points and above gets you “platinum”.  The five categories for point-awarding include Sustainable Sites (SS), Water Efficiency (WE), Energy and Atmosphere (EA), Materials and Resources (MR), and Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ).  There is also the Innovation in Design (ID) category addressing noteworthy measures not classified by the other groups.  There are also “Regional Credits” which are awarded on a region-by-region basis and have to do with awarding green design and construction solutions for a particular site and situation.  You get points that are weighted different things depending on their efficiency and emissions considerations.  Lighting, aesthetics, all of these things come into play.

 

Controversy
First of all, some people reviewing LEED certification question the point weighing in the system.  A classic example of this is “The Bike Rack Argument”, as explained by this article: http://www.jetsongreen.com/2008/04/nau-examines-th.html.  Basically, installing a bike rack gets you one point in the certification, the same number of points granted to you for installing photovoltaics.  Bike racks versus solar panels?  Obviously bike racks are cheaper!  Why are they the same?  You could just install a million bike racks and save up.  Except, not really.  You have to have a combination of several design aspects and point kinds to get certification.  And there are motives behind making these two things the same value.  These motives include the incentives they imply, like the availability of bike racks encourages people to park their bikes, which means they take their bikes rather than their car, and that is considered as valuable as using energy that just happens to come from solar power.

One thing that genuinely makes no sense about LEED certification is that you could build a LEED certified project in a sensitive watershed or other vulnerable ecological scenario and get full recognition for your design.  Anyone who actually cares about the environment wouldn’t build in such a location, but how does that stop greedy people looking for the certification as a marketing strategy?

Also, there are different branches in LEED certification.  Most of these branches are in the design-build aspect and they award the planning, construction, and completion of the project.  However, the least common is the post-construction certification.  One would think this is the ultimately important project.  The function of a building in itself relies on green planning (although maybe not actual construction).  Yet projects are being constructed left and right which meet the standards upon completion, but then fail to function as designed.  These buildings may even be detrimental to the environment!  (Inefficient air conditioning sound familiar to anyone?)

Finally, this is my favorite point: So much (albeit green) energy is spent in planning, designing, constructing, and completing a project to these snobby, high standards set by LEED that no one takes into consideration the durability of the buildings themselves.  The idea is to rate the function of the building over a theoretical lifespan, but what if that lifespan is much shorter because eco-friendly materials were the concern and not durability?  This is something that was discussed on campus in regards to the NRV and similar buildings.  I remember a professor suggesting that a LEED building might be great when its build, and might theoretically work well if operated as designed, but the cost and energy used to demolish and rebuild over the same period of time as another building negates much of its environmentally-friendly implications.  I have no statistical evidence on this latter point, but, unless LEED is planning to make some adjustments to its policies, I can totally see the truth in that theory.

Conclusion
All-in-all I think LEED is a good idea.  It is a good initiative to motivate people; the only problem is I feel like it motivates them in the wrong way.  Its main strategy is to attract people to save money in the long run in exchange for some serious project planning and then a stamp of approval at the end of the day that they can flaunt to their competitors and customers alike.  Sadly, these are usually not the kinds of people who actually care about how they’re impacting the environment.  They want to do all the planning and say they did it, then sit back and rake in money without bothering after ten years to make sure they’re still living up to that standard they originally laid down.  It just seems like an arrogant, snobby, easily-abused program to me, and it makes people look better than they really are.

I work in a LEED certified building, but they don’t flaunt the paperwork.  They’ll tell you why they have skylights and so many windows, and why the lights are never on, but they don’t go “look at how good we are”.  The owners of the company are genuinely intrigued by the allure of sustainability, and so they choose to practice it – even without all the bells and whistles.  To me, that is being the true green champ.  That is what makes Case’s Hogwarts a nauseating come-to-my-school advertisement for snobs.