In Weird News...

Check out this article about trash-art from the Wall Street Journal.


image from the Wall Street Journal

This used to be a turkey sternum. Now it is art!

Make Your Jack-o-Lantern and Eat It Too

In honor of Sasha, this post is about eating your jack-o-lantern.

Image from RecipeTips.com

Instead of letting all the perfectly good pumpkin food go to waste, it's possible to make tons of sweet and savory treats from your Halloween decor. Carved jack-o-lanterns keep several days before they start rotting. Cut away any rotting parts before you cook. Instead of sooty candles, the the Ultimate Cheapskate recommends using an electric light.

When cutting, remove the seeds, rinse them, dry them, salt them, season them, and bake them on a lightly oiled cookie sheet in a 250' oven for around an hour. Stir every 20 minutes.

Scrape out as much pulp as you can. Steam it for 30 minutes or until it's tender, then puree it in a blender.

Painted jack-o-lanterns are OK too, but make sure you don't get paint in the food. Pop them in the oven and bake them to make the skin flake off.

How-to from Mother Earth News:
1. Remove any paint with metal pot scrubber, or peel skin off.
2. Scrape out seeds and stringy fibers with soup spoon.
3. Cut pumpkin into 4-6 pieces, or keep whole and replace the cap when scooped
4. Place on greased cookie sheet
5. Bake at 350'F until tender (about an hour, or an hour and a half if whole)
6. If whole, pour off any collected liquied
7. Cool it quickly in cold water and drain. Cut the meat away from the skin and puree it to remove lumps.
8. If you have lots of pumpkin puree, pack it into pint or quart jars or freeze.

You can make pumpkin pie, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin bread....

Some more ideas from Frugal Fun:

1. Pumpkin butter
(pureed pumpkin plus mace, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, and apples)
2. Pumpkin soup
(pumpkin, hot pepper, apple, garlic, almonds, mozzarella)
3. Pumpkin chocolate chip bars
4. Pumpkin chips
5. Chilean Squash Casserole (from Moosewood Cookbook)
(pumpkin, cheddar cheese, carrots, cumin, salsa)
6. Pumpkin latkes
(grated with eggs, onions, and flour, and fry patties)
7. Thai pumpkin curry
8. Baked pumpkin seeds
9. Pumpkin pie
10. Stuffed pumpkin
(vegetables, cheese, milk, bread crumbs, spices)

If you don't like eating pumpkin, there are still ways to get another use out of it - Gaiam Life recommends composting or donating it to your local zoo.

iReuse

Does your office have a lot of old office chairs?
Some nonprofit wants it!
Are you near San Francisco or Los Angeles?
iReuse will take it!

Recycle This?

There isn't a lot of land left for developers in New Jersey.
How about recycling plots previously polluted?


This state-funded deal would allow new developers to recoup 75% of cleanup costs for these brownfields.

Recycle That!

So San Jose's GreenTeam handles recycling for many of the city's residences. On Friday, the recycling center found something it couldn't recycle.

Five pounds, or several thousand dollars worth, of marijuana.

Does that qualify as compost? Yard waste?

Santa Rosa Recycles Plastic Bags

Thanks to our hauler North Bay Corporation, we Santa Rosans will now be able to recycle plastic bags in our regular old blue bins.

We toss 'em all in one bag (the "bag bag") and then they are taken away to be recycled!

Read about it in the PD.

Recycling Poll!

North Bay Corporation just put a big blue recycling bin in our building's trash room. Mostly, there is trash in it. And you know... sometimes I throw a stray bottle or a can into the trash at the airport. It says "contents recycled off site," but how do I know?

So now, dear reader, I will ask you! What are your thoughts on recycling?

Green Valentines

The cool thing about making your own Valentines is that ANYTHING can turn into a heart.
A comic
Wrapping paper
Hilary Clinton's face in the newspaper
...
You too can be the proud creator of a Valentine full of the faces of Presidential hopefuls. Isn't that better than your typical v-day cards with Garfield on them?
For serious though. Recycle all that old media. Your friends will thank you for the lack of cheesiness (and so will the trees).



If you're not the crafty type, you can always look for gift advice from the pros:
The Sierra Club recommends vintage jewelry and fair trade chocolate.

InHabitat recommends Sustainable Skivvies.

Even the state of UTAH has its act together, for pity's sake, and recommends that you take public transit out on your dates.

Green Your Apartment - Waste

And finally, how to reduce your waste at a time when apartments are their least eco-friendly:
Move-out time.



The City of Davis, CA hosts a Move-Out Day Aug. 30-Sept. 1. The key advice here is DONATE, don't trash. Goodwill, food banks, even Savers or ARC will take your old stuff (sometimes they will even come pick it up).

This might also be a time to promote regular Goodwill trips and weed-throughs ahead of the very stressful time that is moving day. Give away what you can now! Then you aren't stuck with a "trash or take" ultimatum on your big day.

Green Epiphany

In the spirit of the 12th day of Christmas, an epiphany - what to do with those unwanted gift cards! Useless extra pieces of plastic though they may be, you can exchange the ones you don't want at Swaptgift, Plastic Jungle, or Card Avenue. You can even donate the card to charity at Gift Card Donor.

42 Ways to Trim Your Holiday Wasteline

From Use Less Stuff comes 42 Ways to Trim Your Holiday Wasteline. While some border on impolite (turning down the heat before guests arrive to feast instead on their body heat?), some suggestions make sense - don't throw away leftovers, compost your tree, etc. Since Americans trash 25% more stuff from Thanksgiving to New Years, take a look at how you can throw away less.

Use Less Stuff

Use Less Stuff - pretty self-explanatory! - uses quantitative data to help people reduce their waste.

Sonoma Mountain Village

Today, we held a meeting at a very cool place. Sonoma Mountain Village is a recycled Agilent campus in Rohnert Park, CA.

During the technology boom, 3000 people used to work and relax at this Agilent facility. During the technology bust, those thousands of people were downsized and vacated the campus. The very rich real estate-owning Codding family bought up the plant and brought in focus groups of young and old people. "What would you want if you lived here?" They answered: "A car-free center that has a movie theater, unique houses, and shopping." They are hoping that SMV will become Rohnert Park's downtown city center - which it currently lacks, despite being home to Sonoma State University (part of the Cal-State system).

But enough of the boring history. This place is going to be sweet. It has the second largest solar array in the world (beat only by Google). Codding Steel plans to make pre-fab houses from recycled cars - even better, they make them to each resident's specs, so you don't get the cookie cutter effect where all the houses in a planned neighborhood look the same. The Agilent campus is meticulously designed and people friendly, so it's got good bones for future development. The meeting room (nee Agilent's cafeteria) is bright and airy. "The first model homes should be available for viewing by mid-2008." Squee!

Read about it in the San Francisco Chronicle, or check out the satellite image of the site.

America Recycles Day: Nov. 15!

Are you ready? America Recycles Day is coming Nov. 15!

Use that computer baby!

So, a public service announcement. Don't be like me. When your laptop breaks, do what you can to fix it instead of buying a new one. It's super hard on the environment to make a new computer.

"'The manufacture of brand new computer models uses more than four times the energy and resources it would take to extend the life of an older machine for another few years,' says Sheila Davis, executive director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition" on The Green Guide.



Find information on computer takebacks, visit Computertakeback.com.

Ask Metafilter for ideas for making your old computer last.

Kevin 2.0 has instructions for turning your old laptop hard drive into a USB drive.

Also, check out people's ideas for Old Joel's old laptop, including "Set up the screen saver to scroll the Unabomber's Manifesto, then leave it unattended in the airport. Watch hilarity ensue."

New Belgium - Sustainable Beer

New Belgium Brewery, maker of Fat Tire Ale, goes to impressive lengths to make its production sustainable.


Founded by an electrical engineer and a social worker, its employees voted in 1998 to finance a conversion to wind power. New Belgium conserves water, signed on to the 2002 LEED-Existing Buildings pilot program, and recycles much of its materials used. Even spent grain becomes cattle feed. New Belgium comissioned an artist to create its facility stools out of old bike parts, and uses old bottlecaps to build tables. Last but not least, New Belgium has hired a sustainability specialist – keeping people like me in business.

Find out more at the New Belgium website.

Makes ya proud to be from Fort Collins!

Plastic Bag Makeover

I'm bored and penniless today, and wanted to find a craft project. What better to cheaply fill my time than a recycled plastic bag project from Craftster? You take the bags and iron them together to make a more permanent grocery solution.



Here is a plastic bag fusing tutorial that says you can use office paper instead of parchment paper. This is very exciting!

Here is my attempt, made from a Forever 21 bag, San Francisco Chronicle sleeves, and a picture from the cover of Harper's:


Things I learned:

1. It is good to have parchment paper. You have to be careful when you use separate sheets of paper.
2. It is good to have interesting plastic bags.
3. It is good to have a sewing machine.
4. Plastic bags totally do fuse together! Awesome!

Recycline Preserve Toothbrush

I found a toothrbush in Mill Valley today that is made from recycled yoghurt containers. Wohoo!


The Recycline Preserve toothbrush can even be returned and they will grind it up again. Nice!

Green Breakfast

So I've finally replaced daily trips to Starbucks or the bagel shop with green tea and a protein smoothie. I like to re-use POM tea glasses or Acher Farms juice bottles to take them along to work with me. Saves money, time, a car trip and empty calories.


Here is my protein shake recipe:

1 banana
1/2 c vanilla yoghurt
1 c orange juice OR milk
1 c frozen strawberries, raspberries, mangoes, peaches, or blueberries
OR 3 tbsp. almond butter (use milk instead of orange juice. ew. also, freeze your banana ahead of time)
1 scoop protein powder

This packs about 30 grams of protein for breakfast overall, more if you use milk & almond butter. Not bad, eh?

Green Holidays

Depressingly, it is time for winter holiday talk. I am adding to the millieu of pre-Halloween Christmas/Hanukkah discussion. Luckily, Ramadan has already passed for the year or we'd have another monotheistic religion on our hands to deal with. (Ramadan and Eid seem pretty green in my brief experience of them - you eat less, eat with your hands, and walk cookies over to your neighbors - no waste!)


Sustainable forest/recycled Christmas cards from Owl.
Sign the self-righteous Buy Handmade pledge today!

Laura and I were excited to read about this, even though THE HOLIDAYS are still aeons away.



TreeHugger.com has an eco-friendly Gift Guide for Christmas and Hanukkah. As one who recently begun to relish wrapping presents in brown grocery bags, I am excited by this guide to buying the gifts themselves. Find out about fabric gift bags, recycled glass ornaments, and natural beeswax Hanukkah candles. See what you think!