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So what did you all do when the storms hit and your power failed.. Were you prepared?

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Natural Home & Garden Magazine

Natural Home & Garden Magazine

How to Create a Zero-Waste Kitchen

September/October 2011
http://www.naturalhomeandgarden.com/recycling/how-to-create-a-zero-waste-kitchen.aspx

By Letitia L. Star
kitchen shelving
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Photo By Deborah Whitlaw Llewellyn

Stroll into The Kitchen, a community bistro located in the heart of Boulder, Colorado, and you’re in for a culinary treat—rustic food that’s in-season, locally grown and prepared over an open fire. But what’s also noteworthy is that all waste is either recycled or composted, no small feat for a popular eatery. “We moved to zero waste seven years ago and we strive to improve every day,” says Kimbal Musk, chef-owner of The Kitchen (thekitchencafe.com). “Our oils are recycled as biodiesel, and composted foods go to our local farms,” he says. “We also were the first wind-powered restaurant in Colorado, which we see as another form of zero waste.”

Anyone interested in reducing waste and saving money can learn from The Kitchen and others dedicated to making their operations zero-waste, meaning they send nothing to the landfill. Here’s how a few small, easy changes can minimize your footprint while potentially saving you some cash.

Rethink Waste

Planning well is the first step toward a waste-free kitchen. Consider all of the waste your kitchen produces—trash, food waste, water waste—and how you can process it on-site. “Zero-waste is not only a physical kitchen, but a mindset,” says Adela Szpira-Stopka, a green-designated broker with @properties, a Chicago real estate company. “Given that most home waste originates in the kitchen, a green home should definitely include a zero-waste kitchen.”

Musk says it’s not difficult to become conscious of, then reduce, kitchen waste. “With simple new habits you can end up with a very small amount of true landfill garbage, which may mean reduced costs on your garbage bill,” he says. “Home kitchens should use a three-unit system: one container for compost, one for recycling and one smaller unit for nonrecyclable items such as plastic wrap.”

Coffee grounds, onion peels, carrot tops, egg shells and other non-meat food waste can go into a countertop crock, then on to a compost pile in your yard. Or use vermicompost bins, in which worms turn food waste into a nutrient-rich soil amendment. For a list of compostables, and instructions and tips on making compost, read the article "Compost at Home: Tips for Composting and Vermicomposting."

Trash Talk

Today most trash is recyclable, so hopefully your recycle bins will be much fuller than your nonrecyclable bin. As you move forward, examine the items that end up in the nonrecyclable bin. You will probably notice a few specific things that always reappear—most likely food and product packaging. Can you eliminate these items or replace them with alternatives? Perhaps you could rid yourself of plastic wrap by purchasing several reusable glass storage containers with lids.

Buying in bulk can also reduce waste: Choose the largest container of household essentials such as dish soap, and maximize your use of bulk bins. Recycling the cardboard box your spaghetti came in is great, but you could eliminate it altogether by buying pasta out of your grocer’s bin and carrying it home in a reusable organic cotton bag. Blue Lotus makes organic cotton grain and produce bags that double as storage bags that help keep produce fresh.

If you often find your plastic laundry detergent bottle in the landfill-bound bin, consider completely eliminating that waste by making your own. Find recipes for washing powder, stain spray and brightener.

Eliminating disposables is another easy way toreduce kitchen waste. Make the choice to rid your home of paper towels and napkins, plastic bags and wraps, and disposable utensils. Many companies offer reusable, lightweight, travel-ready utensils made from bamboo or recycled materials. Choose glass or metal food-storage containers with lids (reused glass jars work great). Turn old sheets or clothes into rags, or buy biodegradable, reusable cleaning cloths, sponges and scouring pads.

Water Log

Water is used heavily in the kitchen. Though it may not be possible to completely eliminate water waste, you can do a lot to conserve water in the kitchen. Start with efficient appliances, including low-flow faucets (or faucet aerators) and high-efficiency dishwashers. Modern dishwashers eliminate water waste because they don’t require you to rinse dishes before putting them in the machine. Composting saves the water you would otherwise use to wash food down the disposal. You could also come up with clever ways to reuse kitchen water such as hanging a dish-drying rack above windowsill plants.

You might consider a graywater system, which is great for reusing household water as landscape irrigation; unfortunately, because the kitchen is often the site of heavy-duty cleaning products and unsafe bacteria from foods such as raw meat, most experts recommend using water from bathroom sinks, tubs, showers and clothes washing machines, rather than from kitchen sinks and dishwashers.

Waste Reduction Tips

Several steps can reduce the amount of trash, energy and water waste you create.

•End food waste. Enliven leftover food with herbs and spices, or turn it into a new dish. “Never throw out tasty food scraps that could be used for soups or stews,” Musk says. “My favorite is roast chicken leftovers, which make the best chicken noodle soup you’ve ever tasted.” Prevent waste by learning more about food spoilage rates at stilltasty.com. For tips on shopping wisely to reduce food waste and helping food last longer, visit naturalhomeandgarden.com/make-food-last.

• Stop leaks. To spot a slow-dripping leaky kitchen faucet, check your water meter before and after a two-hour period when no water is being used. If it changed, you’ve got a leak! Find other water-reduction tips.

• Enhance fridge efficiency. To reduce your refrigerator’s electricity demands, create an organizational diagram and post it on the door. This saves time rummaging around with the door open and makes it easy to see what you’re out of before a trip to the store. If you can see just fine without it, unscrew the light bulb. And make sure your fridge door fits tightly—a good way to test this is to put a dollar inside the door. If you can pull it out without opening the door, you need to replace your seals. A full fridge changes temperature less easily than an empty one; increase your fridge’s interior mass by placing reusable frozen cold packs inside.

• Choose hand-operated. Consider hand-operated kitchen tools that don’t need electricity (or counter space), such as stainless steel hand graters, whisks, glass citrus juicers and manual egg beaters.

• Donate excess. Drop off unused cookware, dishware, glassware and appliances to secondhand stores or homeless shelters: Salvation Army, Homeless Shelter Directory. Recycle your old, second fridge or freezer. Some electricity suppliers offer rebates to customers who recycle their old clunkers and cut their utility bills. Check to see if your local utility offers such a program.

• Stock recycled. Buy kitchen items that already recycled landfill waste before they got to you. Ten Thousand Villages sells fair-trade, handcrafted home items made by artisan communities around the world. Look for recycled paper tableware, floor mats made from flip flops, baskets made from snack bags, bottle openers made out of bicycle chains and much more.

Letitia L. Star is a healthy-living writer and photographer who has written more than 1,000 articles, including many on green living, healthy eating and organic gardening.

New Trend: Municipal Composting

If you don’t have composting space, look for municipal compost programs by searching online for “composting program” and your city name. Some municipal programs offer kitchen pails, green bins and free pick-up. Helpful websites:

• Chicago: Chicago Recycling Coalition

• Denver: Compost Collection Pilot Program

• New York

• San Francisco: Recology



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ooops

ooops

coming up APN Tristate Campout and meet up

Nickerson Park Family Campground
the 24th thru the 26th on june.. come join the fun.. $6 a night per camper..from friday to sunday at 10 am..
Going to be a Load of fun!!



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Low-tech Magazine: Pedal powered farms and factories: the forgotten future of the stationary bicycle

Low-tech Magazine: Pedal powered farms and factories: the forgotten future of the stationary bicycle




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Finding Edible Wild Fruits in the Country

Finding Edible Wild Fruits in the Country


It is almost that time again..This year I am going to concentrate on foraging for fruits!

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America 2011

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/america-2011
What kind of place is America in 2011? Sadly, it is one giant sea of conformity. If you traveled across the United States 40 or 50 years ago, you would encounter a vast array of cultures and you would meet a wonderful mix of people. But today America is slowly but surely becoming standardized. It seems like wherever you go you will find a Wal-Mart and a McDonald's. Thanks to Hollywood and the mass media, people all over the country dress the same and look the same and talk the same. Sure there are various subcultures out there, but even many of those subcultures are virtually the same on one coast as they are on the other. The things that gave flavor to our local communities are dying off in favor of greater conformity and greater profit. Today, most retail stores and most restaurants are corporate owned. Most small businesses that attempt to go up against the Wal-Marts, the Targets, the Burger Kings or the Home Depots of the world have already been stomped out of existence or are in the process of being stomped out of existence. Eventually, if we are not careful, corporate conformity is going to dominate everything from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Some may view this as "progress", but is this really what the American Dream is supposed to be all about? Is this really the "America" that we want to pass down to future generations?

Our society has become so homogenized that we don't really question it anymore. We all watch American Idol, we all buy the same boring looking cars we see advertised on television and we all buy the same mass-produced corporate products down at Costco.

For many Americans, doing something "exotic" means going out to Applebee's on Friday night.

If you are under 40 years of age and you have never been out of the country you should really make it a point to do that. Today there are millions upon millions of young Americans that have no idea what "another culture" even looks like. All they know is how America does things and they have been taught that the American way of doing things is always the best.

Sadly, sometimes we think our way is so superior that it should be forced upon the rest of the world.

When this nation was founded, our founding fathers were extremely suspicious of large concentrations of power. Corporations did not dominate early America. Instead, millions of individuals and small businesses worked together to make this country great. Back in those days a "family store" could be started without fear that a corporate giant like Wal-Mart would come waltzing in to crush it.

When Wal-Marts started to spread across the United States, almost everyone loved them. The prices were lower, the selection was much greater and Wal-Mart brought jobs to the community.

When I would visit family or friends they would always excitedly talk about the new Wal-Mart that was going up somewhere nearby. They saw Wal-Mart as a sign of progress and something that would make their lives better.

Unfortunately, we now know that all of that corporate conformity comes at a very high price.

When Wal-Mart moves into a community, often dozens of local businesses can't compete and are forced to close.

Wal-Mart does bring jobs, but they are really crappy jobs. A very, very small percentage of Wal-Mart jobs will even come close to enabling someone to support a family.

But Wal-Mart is making a ton of money. So where does all of that money go?

It goes out of the local community and into the pockets of the Wal-Mart shareholders.

Wal-Mart is like a giant vacuum cleaner. It sucks the wealth out of our local communities and it transfers it into the hands of the very wealthy.

But don't all of the products sold at Wal-Mart support American businesses and American jobs?

No.

Just go into a Wal-Mart some time and start picking up products. You will notice that the vast majority of them are made outside of the United States.

Americans love to buy stuff made in China. And the big corporations love that because they are more than happy to pay slave labor wages to workers in places like China and India.

But I don't want to just pick on Wal-Mart. The vast majority of our retail establishments are now owned by huge corporations. They all crush small businesses and they all suck wealth out of our local communities.

Most of us have enjoyed the "low, low prices" that the mega-corporations have brought in, but as inflation has gone up faster than our wages, large numbers of Americans have had to go into debt in order to enjoy all of these cheap products.

Today, what the average American family owes is equivalent to 136% of what an average American family makes each year.

We have a national addiction to debt. To the corporations and the banks we are viewed as "consumers" and the goal is to drain as much money out of us as possible. They want us to be completely dependent on them so that we will be snared in the trap of "consumerism" forever.

The fact that corporations have become so dominant in our society is a huge reason why wealth has become so concentrated at the top. Today, the bottom 50 percent of all Americans own just 2.5% of the wealth. In a true capitalist society this would not happen because individuals and small businesses would be able to compete fairly in the marketplace and would be thriving.

But unfortunately, our system greatly favors giant corporations today. In fact, what we have in our country today is much more aptly called "corporatism" rather than "capitalism". The vast majority of Americans work for either a giant corporation or for the government. We even teach our children that they should go to college and study hard so that they can "get a job" rather than telling them that they should endeavor to "start a business" someday.

If nothing changes, wealth and power will continue to become even more concentrated in the hands of the few. Meanwhile, America will just continue to become a giant sea of corporate conformity and a very boring place.

"America 2011" is not nearly as interesting as America was 50 years ago. We are becoming defined by our greedy corporate overlords. We just blindly conform and we let others do our thinking for us.

If our founding fathers could see us today, they would be absolutely horrified.


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