People commute around town by bicycle for many different reasons. One of those reasons is for sustainability for this planet and a basic feeling one person shouldn't have to make such an impact. I'm starting this thread as a general place we promote and ask questions about being green off of the bicycle. I have plenty of questions and plenty of things i still want to do and im sure most here feel the same way. I recycle at the shop but im looking to do more. much more.

Here's some quick subjects right off the top of my head:

Composting
Alternative energy
"Clean" automobiles
Local food
Recycling
Re-using
Organic food
Organic clothing
Organic substitutes for daily harsh chemicals in the home
buying locally made products (not buying things that travel 10,000 miles to get to you)

Here's what we have to eat from Suzies Farm CSA boxes this week. This is a good desctiption of what CSA farming is

It's nice knowing that your produce comes from 15 miles away. It's also nice knowing the farmers and taking a tour. Having seasonal produce is new to me and it's nice. Getting a large array of produce means that we're forced to learn new recipes which is never a bad thing, not to mention we're forced to eat more fresh produce which really works well with me because i don't want it to go bad so i eat far more produce now than i ever have before.

roaches? I've never had problems with roaches in my compost bin. Even when we lived in a row home. I did have problem with fruit flies but then I learn to not compost banana peels. I plan on getting an outdoor composter shortly so I can use heat to compost some of the things we currently don't like egg shells and lemon peels as they drastically change the ph of the worm bin and bother our worms.

use the new soy triflow. you hand pump instead of aerosol. also comes in a drip.

Also, the jury is still out on how much benefit there really is to organic farming:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_food#Environmental_impact

It's kind of a mixed bag of good and not so good. Some of the "organic" pesticides are actually kind of scary. Yields can be lower, which means you need more land to feed the same number of people, may need more water etc.

I'm guessing it's going to vary a fair bit from farm to farm as well. Some will do it better than others.

Velo Cult:benefit to people and the water table will still be a better. pesticides in my body and in the water table i can do without. organic is not as important to me as being local though. the idea of produce being picked green, shipped 2000 miles and being an inferior product i can't get on board with. i mean, why use semi trucks to haul around our produce like that? thats one quick and easy way to cut down on your carbon foot print and in the end you get better produce. buying local helps small farmers and keeps money in our community. sames goes with all purchasing from local INDEPENDENT businesses.

^-- This.

bëany:I plan on getting an outdoor composter shortly so I can use heat to compost some of the things we currently don't like

Gotta put my 2¢, in our region when speaking of "heat" in a compost pile that does NOT mean sticking it smack dab in the middle of direct sun. That only dries it out, bakes your worms & organisms. They are talking about internal heat that is generated by the happy balance of microbes/microorganisms/beneficial bacteria (or whatever the technical term is). You can get internal heat even if you pile is in a corner under a tree. You just have to work out the happy balance i the pile and that includes the moisture levels and aeration as well as the greens to browns ratio. Our area of southern California gets too hot for a lot of the advice you read about composting. So we have to tweak it a bit. So to keep your micro-critters happiest with the least amount of effort I wouldn't have it in direct sun for too many hours a day.

Velo Cult:organic is not as important to me as being local though. the idea of produce being picked green, shipped 2000 miles and being an inferior product i can't get on board with. i mean, why use semi trucks to haul around our produce like that? thats one quick and easy way to cut down on your carbon foot print and in the end you get better produce. buying local helps small farmers and keeps money in our community.

Me too. I choose local, sustainable, then organic. If I can get all three - yay. You have to remember that Dole, Del Monte, Sunkist, etc all have organic sections now - HUGE organic farms with butt loads of machinery to run the farm not to mention the trucking miles. I like the switch, it's nice that they are trying I guess, but I don't like that they would take away from smaller, local farms (perhaps not so much here, but I know in PA, VA there are so many local producers but they may get out priced by the big companies). And now with our CSAs popping up, and Farmer's Markets becoming more of a "regular" thing rather than a weekend novelty, we want to encourage them by buying local.

Im all about composting as well. I also have chickens, and a pond. I use the pond water for my small garden which is also a dog house and I use chicken compost for the garden then feed all the scraps and worms to the chickens. I also have a worm compost, I keep it outdoors and have never had a problem with roaches either. I have all kinds of little bugs in it but they usually stay on top with the fresh scraps. I also use it as a collection area for the worms that I put into the worm compost. I have had luck with collecting worms by placing wet cardboard a little below the soil over night and collecting the worms in the morning or just going out and collecting the worms. I have never bought the red worms though. They breed really fast.

I built the coop and dog house for about $100



This is a picture of my doghouse on the left with tomatos, lettuce, and some herbs


and here is a picture of my hound in the Dog house.. had to add this in, he is an awesome old dog

re-think plastic water bottles

Chris Taylor:This is decidedly one of the ways not to promote greenness:

"Six-lane addition proposed to ease daily I-5 backups"

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/may/28/six-lane-addition-proposed-to-ease-daily-i-5/

But....Todd Gloria states this in response:

Six additional freeway lanes? No thanks. I'd prefer the money be used to extend Trolley service and build more bike lanes. Much smarter ways to ease traffic congestion.

I almost want to kiss the man.

---

And very, very nice work 1rider. So beautiful.

I have one of those "tumbling barrel" composters: I can second (or 3rd or 5th) that I have never, ever seen a single roach in it: And that's not for not having roaches anywhere on the property - they are here, but for some reason they are not interested in the composter.

bëany: we currently don't like egg shells and lemon peels as they drastically change the ph of the worm bin and bother our worms.

I didn't know that egg shells were bad: I considered stopping using shells because it seemed it took forever for them to break down. But then somebody said that eggshells in the soil keeps slugs away from vegetables, so I decided to keep on composting them: I must have dozens of worms per cubic foot of composting material, so they don't seem to be too bothered by it.

I use eggs so infrequently that the shells don't seem to be a problem. I peel out the membrane, since it is keratin and I don't want animal proteins in the compost, then reduce the shells to tiny fragments.

Citrus rinds seem to keep the worms away from the topmost layer, but they break down quickly when the compost is moist enough. Digging down a few inches the peels are not noticable and the worms are active below.

Slightly acidic soil is good for acid loving plants such as orchids, iris, and hydrangea. My house was built on vernal pool habitat in 1924. The hard clay is just below a thin layer of topsoil which I keep enriched with compost. It's a challenge to find plants that will tolerate the poor drainage. Jacaranda. bougainvillea, and lantana seem to do well. Ornamental fruit trees do not.

"grey water" is a Burning Man term since the playa dust mixed with water is grey. it's crazy how it caught on as the term for reclaimed water. and no i don't reclaim water. i would if i had a garden or something. living in a condo with no plants i don't have really much to use it for.

One note on the water. She was talking about bottling her own tap water. She lives in Oakland. Assuming they have the same tap water as San Francisco, they have awesome tap water. When I stayed with a friend in S.F., I was amazed at how good the tap water was. San Diego, on the other hand, has very bad tap water.

ray333:I use grey water in my compost and to irrigate my yard.

How to you capture it - tanks collecting rain water from your roof?

Last week i watched the entire first season of The Lazy Environmentalist from Netflix on my Roku

We've been trying to get a plumber to install a grey water system in our house for years. Haven't found one yet that will - get all sorts of excuses about "codes violations", etc... We just want to take our washer & bath water for the garden. And we do save the water that we spend waiting for the hot water to arrive. We have a large pretty glass jug on the kitchen counter & bucket in the bathroom. It's not a lot, but enough to water some plants.

We used to do that in the 70's - took baths, saved bath water & flushed the toilet by hurling a bucket of water down the bowl.

bëany:

Today I finally bought packaging free ice cream from Mariposa. I took a pint sized canning jar and had them fill it up. So no waste, and I support a local, small business.

Well...since I raved about Mariposa, thought I'd post what I also found. I asked Mariposa where they source their milk from. It is Heartland Farms based in City of Industry, CA. I've asked for clarification, because if the company is indeed the same subsidiary of Dean Foods, then I'm going to have to go back to eating either no ice cream or getting it from Strauss. Dean Foods is also known for their other subsidiary Horizon Organics where their organic cows are in CAFO style settings but get fed "organic vegetarian corn" (I read a few stories on this a while back - can't find them now), and Dean Foods has been accused of having bad workplace settings, etc, etc.

EDIT: I intend to contact Heartland to figure out how their cows are treated. But so far it isn't looking good. Their website isn't listing the keywords I tend to look for and the place looks more industrial factory style than a farm. Plus I don't see pictures of the actual cows lounging around in a cow-like manner chewing the cud.

I gave up on dairy products. Never felt good eating them anyway. Miss butter though.

The coconut milk ice creams are awesome.

Bev:For those that may be interested, here is the Cornucopia Organic Dairy Report/Rating: http://www.cornucopia.org/dairysurvey/

They rightly give Horizon a -O- rating. They not only rate on the cows immediate living conditions (feed/dry lots, CAFO, pastured, etc), but also on the companies' ethical standings, the cull rates, cattle sourcing, among other things. We try to stick to Stremicks & Clover dairies as they are in the highest catagory AND trucked the least distance (at least they're in CA). I'm glad others are finally starting to notice this stuff. I used to try to mention it and people would look at me like I was mad.

That link is very useful! Thanks for posting it.

I tend to go with Strauss, because I like the glass returnable bottles and they seem to be genuinely interested in getting rid of their plastic packaging.

And I can really relate to people looking at you like you're nuts. I still get that on occasion and I am honestly confused. Why the hell would you want to eat pesticide/hormone laden "food"?

Bev:For those that may be interested, here is the Cornucopia Organic Dairy Report/Rating: http://www.cornucopia.org/dairysurvey/

They rightly give Horizon a -O- rating. They not only rate on the cows immediate living conditions (feed/dry lots, CAFO, pastured, etc), but also on the companies' ethical standings, the cull rates, cattle sourcing, among other things. We try to stick to Stremicks & Clover dairies as they are in the highest catagory AND trucked the least distance (at least they're in CA). I'm glad others are finally starting to notice this stuff. I used to try to mention it and people would look at me like I was mad.

Thanks for sharing! That's a pretty cool list of rankings and they have a lot of information on the top-tier companies but really lack any useful information on the lower ranked companies. I'm not saying that these companies are are unjustly ranked, just that the lack of information makes me skeptical about their "studies".

I'm sad to hear about Horizon but am glad that it was brought to my attention so I could research it a bit...I didn't buy their products very often but won't be buying them at all in the future.

Bev:That's the problem is that those compnies were not forthcoming with information. They are not transparent regarding their practices. If you don't have anything to hide, then why withhold information?

Right...that makes sense to a point. I have just always had trouble agreeing with the assumption that no data implies bad data. Though, I suppose in most cases like this it is a correct assumption since providing good data will in all only help your company gain popularity.

Velo Cult:

Njord Noatun:(composting probably is top of the list).

me too. i really want to try worm composting but im so worried about roaches. i keep reading that roaches will take over that it's been holding me back. i want one at the condo and at the shop. anyone have tips on keeping the roaches at bay? i know they help decompose but i still don't like the damn things and im sure my wife won't appreciate having them around.

We boought this Red wriggler vermiculture from the Leucadia Farmer's market for $40 bucks. Three buckets: top two buckets for worms and the bottom catches the concentrated worm tea. The buckets have small drilled holes for air circulation. We've never had problems with rodents, roaches, or fruit flies.... As long as the food leftovers are buried under the soil fruit flies won't be a problem.

In the picture below. I discovered that seeds thrive on the nutrient rich vermiculture environment . So I threw in some seeds: pepper, cabbage, etc. Presto! These will be ready for transplanting.

No watering required. We'll be expanding our wriggly worm bins soon