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POPSSnakes swallowing kangaroos and donation overload What's the connection? Seems that a snake CAN swallow a kangaroo. But it may take weeks to digest. But Value Village CANNOT "digest" overflow donations, the aftermath of unsold "stuff" from weekend garage/yard sales! Consequently, lots and lots of perfectly good, reusable stuff ends up in the dumpster and the landfills. Any thoughts on avoiding this queueing, peak period problem?
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POPSComposting dog waste Backyard solution to your dog waste woes? Mike Levenston at City Farmer, a demonstration garden and compost site run by Canada's Office of Urban Agriculture in Vancouver, B.C. lives in the city and has a dog. The solution, says Mike, is to compost dog waste in yard, using a old plastic garbage can. The folks at City Farmer developed the method, which is one of the most popular tips on the cityfarmer.org web site. The technique provides "a chance where people can have it slowly decompose in a yard and be environmentally safe."
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POPSThe Scavengers Manifesto Recently featured in the Seattle Post Intelligencer... caught my eye! http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/books/402890_scavenge10.html
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POPSOne person's junk; another's treasure In Canada, there is also the Fullcircles network -- FullCircles.org -- in addition to Freecycle and ReUseIt. And, there are local "flavours" of freecycling in the U.K. as well.
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POPSNeed FREE Junk??? Some National (Canada) coverage for freecycling, the phenomenon that has been sweeping the planet since 2003. This article appeared in the Ottawa Sunday Sun today, and is featured on canoe.ca/greenplanet
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POPSCommunity Fruit Harvesting What a cool idea! I was just this morning thinking about this after reading an Edmonton FullCircles offer to pick unharvested rasberries.
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POPSPrecycling Introduced to freecyclers on the Ottawa, ON Canada Recycling BB. Link to it from the Ottawa "Hub"... ottawa.fullcircles.org =================
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POPSCanadian mag pioneers the “wheat sheet” Nicole Rycroft, executive director of Markets Initiative, said the wheatsheet represents a great opportunity to turn agricultural waste products into an environmentally friendly paper. "We were looking for a creative way to alleviate the stress on Canadian forests," she said. Canada is the world's largest producer of commercial pulp, but the industry has shown little interest in wheat straw, which is used primarily in China. In fact, the wheat straw pulp used to create the wheat sheet was imported from China because there is no facility in North America able to process wheat into pulp. Ms. Rycroft said the 15 million tonnes of cereal waste Canadian agriculture creates annually could be used to make 7.5 million tonnes of pulp, equivalent to about 80 per cent of all the newsprint used in Canada in a given year.
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POPSLose the lawn altogether I don't know why this should be considered the "extreme" option. Seems to me that lawns -- systems on ***high intensity permanent life support -- should be considered the extreme. *** HIGH INTENSITY PERMANENT LIFE SUPPORT ... What I mean is that in order to survive and thrive, lawns NEED: - regular cutting - regular watering - fertilizing - pest and weed control (usually chemical) How did we ever let lawns become some kind of status symbol??? What were we thinking!? /e
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POPSAn imaginative use for your garage: car storage Although this article was written four years ago in 2004, it is perhaps even more valid today in 2008. The article mentions giving things away on Freecycle. Since 2004, the freecycling idea has caught on... big time. There are many other networks now: fullcircles.org; reuseitnetwork.org. Over 5 million people in 88 countries are using these networks to declutter, and simplify their living spaces and their lives.
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POPSWhy is stiving for sustainability SO important? This piece has been extracted from the Interface Inc. website. Interface is the largest manufacturer of carpeting in the world. In the mid 90's, then CEO, Ray Anderson , had an epiphany... a spear through the chest, and started this multinational corporation down a new path!
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POPSGREEN free-for-all Ottawa Sunday Sun article - May 4th. Introduction to Freeganism, Freecycle, carsharing, bagborroworsteal, bookcrossing. The article says... "There is an Ottawa group. In fact, there are almost 30 geographically dispersed local groups in the National Capital area including 25,000+ locals! Check out our regional hub - http://ottawa.FullCircles.org.
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POPSPERMAculture: Path to Sustainable gardens
Some of permaculture's key guidelines for designing a garden (or a lifestyle) include: * Honor the health of the system and of all components above their productivity; favor slow changes and low levels of work and input and output over the drive to maximize production, which pushes the system out of balance. * Maintain closed-loop cycles of all materials to keep the system in balance; what we might call waste is re-imagined as a surplus resource, to be used as an input into another process. * Designate zones of more intense and less intense energy use to maximize efficiency and minimize wasted labor and resources. * Build in redundancy -- each element has many functions, and each function is performed by many elements -- to ensure stability in the system. * Do not use stores of natural capital to sustain ongoing processes, but tap them for the extra energy needed when generating a structure or system or putting a process into action. * Use natural proces
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POPSLawnless Landscapes Here in Ottawa, Canada, this it the PERFECT time for us to start thinking about ways to get rid of the lawn. In 2008, we all know that a monoculture, single species landscape is not self-sustaining. It needs TONS of inputs -- water, labor, fuel, fertilizer, pest and weed control, etc. What a waste! And for what?
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POPS"Stuff" happens A cute 1 minute video which uses an ice buildup metaphor to capture the sense of how "stuff" fills up and eventually overwhelms our living spaces. There are now over 5000 self-help groups of folks in 88 countries dedicated to helping us get rid of that "stuff" in planet-friendly ways. Find them here - finder.overcycle.org /es
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POPSMission: Clutter Control Short video promoting freecycling (ie. Internet-mediated gifting) as a planet-friendly "green" way of getting rid of unwanted stuff quickly and relatively painlessly. There are now over 5000 groups; 5 million people in 88 countries playing the decluttering game. Freecycle, the first, is now one of many networks. Find a group near you here - finder.overcycle.com.
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POPSWe have met the enemy... and he is us! Who can't personally identify with this. Sometimes it seems to me that we need to reboot civilization. We seem to have it completely wrong. Even if we reboot, what a total mess we've made of our home... the earth... and what a huge job we have to try to clean up our mess!
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POPSLarger House or dumpster? Humans are shop-a-holics. How much of our "stuff" do we use, need... or even really want? We just keep acquiring more and more and more and more. When is enough too much?
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