The Sustainability R’s: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and More

This week I heard an educator for sustainability from the United Arab Emirates talk via skype at the CELF summer institute about the 6R’s of sustainability, rather than the more familiar 3R’s (reduce, reuse, recycle).  Respect and refuse were two of the additional R's she listed, but I could not recall the 6^th R.  I immediately googled 6R’s and found that rather than a standardized list of 6Rs, there are a whole slew of sustainability R’s offered on different web pages.  That got me thinking, how many sustainability R’s should we have?  Which are the most important? 

Here are some of the contenders I found (starting with the big 3):

1.     Reduce

2.     Reuse

3.     Recycle

4.     Respect

5.     Refuse

6.     Replenish

7.     Rethink

8.     Repair

9.     Reinvent

10.  Recover

11.  Responsibility

12.  Replant

13.  Restore

14.  Rot

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

The classic 3R’s of sustainability were on all of the lists I found. 

Reduce

By reducing the amount of “stuff” we obtain, we decrease the energy needed for manufacture, transport and disposal.   We also cause less disruption to the ecosystems where the materials originate, are transported through and are disposed.  Life on a finite world, with finite resources, always involves limits.

Reuse

The more we can reuse items and avoid single use items, the better.  Take a look at my earlier post on the humble handkerchief vs. the throw-away tissue.  

Recycle

There has been a huge shift across the country from throwing most waste into the trash, to recycling a large portion of it.  Single-stream recycling is changing the amount of recycling done by many households.  Check out yesterday's post on recycling.  

The new Sustainability R’s:

Here are some of the additional sustainability R's I found in my search.

Respect and Responsibility both ask us to think about the ecosystem, including the people who live around the world, and think about any effects our actions might have.

Refuse

To me, refuse fits within the category reduce.  By refusing items, we are essentially reducing our consumption.  This month of July, many in the sustainability community are encouraging others to refuse single-use disposable plastic items.  At ReduceFootprints blog this week’s #CTWW challenge is to refuse plastic bags.

Replenish, replant, restore, recover all seem to convey a similar theme: trying to leave the world as we found it for those who come after us. 

Rethink/reinvent promote divergent/out-of-the-box thinking.  As is often attributed to Einstein, "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."  This is a critical part of sustainability and one that I think should definitely be highlighted.  By rethinking, we also make sure to view actions from different perspectives and consider how they will effect different constituencies of our planet. 

Repair/renew might be lumped together with the replenish  group in terms of repairing the environment for future generations.  However, they can also be thought of as repairing or renewing an item so that it may be reused. 

Rot – I found this on a list of R's  to represent composting, mulching and other parts of the cycle.  Growing up, my family collected kitchen scraps for our garden well before composting became remotely fashionable.  

Here are some more R's I’ve thought of:

Reflect, Realize, Relate, Rotate, Remember, Return, Remediate

I like Return, because it conveys a sense of a full circle, rather than a linear path.  I think ultimately we should be thinking “cradle to cradle” for all items we use, in other words, consider the entire cycle so that there is no “waste” product at any point.  This will be the subject for a future post.

What would your sustainability R’s be?

Are there any R's that are not mentioned that you would include?

(This post was shared on Healthy, Happy, Green & Natural Party Hop.)

Recycling: A dramatic change!

Large recycling bin used for single-stream recycling

When I was a girl, there was no recycling in my NYC neighborhood.  Everything disposed of was thrown into the trash and ultimately went to the landfill.  I used to imagine an invention where I could insert a used piece of paper in the top, and out the bottom would come a clean, recycled piece of paper.

In the last year, I’ve noticed an explosion of recycling efforts around the country.  Suddenly, single-stream recycling is everywhere, and many people can now recycle the majority of their waste. 

In my town, we can now recycle an incredible array of items.  Take a look at everything that can be recycled.   

Wanting to find out the limits of our new recycling, I sent queries: 

1.  Could I recycle the plastic bags with zippers that sheets are sold in? YES

2.  What about plastic burritos wrappers? YES

3.  granola bar wrappers? YES

4.  Al foil backed paper that enclose some individual tea bags? YES

5.  What about if there's burned on food from grilling on Al foil? STILL OK TO PUT IN

Here is a great article that describes how the recycling facility sorts and prepares for selling the single-stream recycling that is collected.  It's actually cheaper for trash haulers to bring single-stream recycling to the recycling facility than it is for them to dump it as trash.  When in doubt about whether an item is recyclable or not, it is best to recycle it.

If you have single-stream recycling in your neighborhood, make sure you are taking full advantage and are recycling everything that is allowable.

In the past few months, many households in my neighborhood have gone from having a huge trash container and a small recycling bin, to having a huge recycling container and just a small amount of trash for the landfill. 

In NYC public schools and many other schools around the country, students can now recycle metal & foil; glass bottles & jars; rigid plastics; milk & juice cartons and drink boxes and paper in their school cafeterias.   The NYC neighborhood where I grew up now recycles paper, cardboard, metal, glass, plastic (rigid plastics) & cartons (for food and beverages).

It’s been amazing to witness this monumental shift from large scale dumping to large-scale recycling.

It’s important to remember, however, that items that are recycled still incur energy and pollution costs to the environment from manufacturing and transport.   Of the classic 3R's, reducing and reusing are preferred to recycling.

(This post was shared on Healthy, Happy, Green & Natural Party Hop.)

Foraging for blueberries

We went hiking at Anthony’s Nose yesterday.  It was such a beautiful day for a hike. 

About five years ago, we hiked there in early July, and in addition to the gorgeous view on top, we were met with an abundance of ripe low bush wild blueberries (Vaccinium angustifolium).   We haven't managed to replicate the timing for blueberry foraging since then.

Yesterday, most of the blueberries at Anthony’s Nose were not yet ripe.

Low bush blueberries (Vaccinium angustifolium) at Anthony's Nose,  not yet ripe

But we did find a few that were delicious.

Blueberries (Vaccinium angustifolium), Anthony's Nose

Another thing I love about hiking Anthony’s Nose is getting to hike on the Appalachian Trail.  Yesterday we met a young woman who had started hiking in Georgia on February 14^th and was headed for Maine.  Hiking the entire Appalachian Trail is definitely on my long-term to do list -not in the cards for now, but hey, you never know.

For detailed information about hiking Anthony's Nose, check out Hike the Hudson Valley's post on Anthony's Nose.

(This post was shared on Healthy, Happy, Green & Natural Party Hop.)

The humble handkerchief: Thinking about reusable vs. disposable items

When I was in college, I spent a semester in Costa Rica.  For part of my time there, I lived with a host family that had a small farm with six cows.  Every morning neighbors used to come to buy milk, bringing whatever containers they happened to have –old plastic soda bottles were common.  Items were reused over and over again.

Over the years, my family and I have eliminated many single-use, disposable items from our routine. When I was a girl, I used to pack my sandwiches for school in disposable plastic baggies.  My own kids now bring their sandwiches in washable containers.  Back then, every purchase came in a paper or plastic bag.  Now at my local supermarket, I see more and more people (myself included) bringing their own bags.

Interestingly, in some instances, the trend has been in the reverse direction.  If someone had a fever, we used a reusable glass mercury thermometer to measure temperature.  My family now uses a digital thermometer that comes with single-use disposable plastic sleeves.  Even better would be a washable reusable thermometer that has the safety and ease of use of our digital thermometer. 

When I conducted research in a biology lab, there was an enormous amount of single-use disposable equipment, ranging from disposable gloves to micropipette tips.  Similarly, there’s an enormous quantity of single-use disposable items used in health care.  Think about all of the disposable gloves, syringes and  plastic sleeves for thermometers that are used in many health care facilities. It would be interesting to compare the safety and carbon footprint of single-use equipment (including manufacture, transport and disposal) vs. the safety and carbon footprint of autoclaving or otherwise sterilizing and reusing equipment. 

Every week  Reduce Footprints blog puts out a #CTWW(change the world Wednesday) challenge.  This week’s challenge is to stop using a disposable, single-use product for a week.   When thinking about the disposable single-use items that I use on a regular basis, I was struck by how many of them are related to bodily fluids: tissues, toilet paper, tampons and sanitary napkins, to name a few.  I think many folks have an automatic “Yuck!” reaction when it comes to bodily fluids.  Year ago, I had a friend who was adamant that all new parents should use cloth diapers for their babies, but she herself was using disposable items rather than handkerchiefs and cloth sanitary napkins for her own bodily excretions! 

I have taken on this week’s challenge, and instead of using single-use tissues I will revert to the humble handkerchief. My husband always uses handkerchiefs, so we have a supply in the house that I can borrow. 

What about you?  I’d love to hear about any changes you’ve noticed in terms of using single-use vs. reusable items in your life. 

Starting a school CSA

I’m thrilled to share a guest post from my friend and colleague, Christina, who writes about starting a CSA program (community supported agriculture) at the public middle school where she is a teacher:

Swiss chard at the school CSA from Monkshood

Food and school both play a big role in my life so it is not surprising that I spend a good deal of time thinking about both. I have already found a couple of ways to marry the two in a school garden and a healthy lunch program. This year I have been working on a third way to bring better food to our school, a CSA. For anyone not familiar, CSA stands for community supported agriculture and is also known as a “farm share”.

In starting the CSA, my hopes went beyond just connecting people to food, I wanted to connect people to people. I felt that this was a unique opportunity to bring together people who rarely have contact with one another, but have plenty in common. I envisioned students coming in to pick up their family’s vegetables, parents and teachers swapping recipes, and everyone eating healthier by increasing the variety and amount of fresh vegetables they eat.

French breakfast radish at the 

school CSA from Monkshood 

So far, the experience has been all that I hoped for. I get to hear people gushing about their vegetables and all the wonderful recipes they are trying out. Both teachers and district parents bring their children, who are happy to point out what vegetable each bin contains. Teachers from different buildings are getting to know one another, and I am getting to know everyone!

An additional benefit of the CSA is that it improves the quality of food available to people in need in our area.  Any left overs, or shares that people do not pick up are donated to a local food bank. While the food bank is a recipient of a good deal of dry goods, patrons do not otherwise get any fresh produce.

Since it was my first time orchestrating something like this, I looked for help. Just Food, a NYC based organization that works to connect farmers to consumers in the city, proved to be a great resource, even though my school is located outside of NYC. They offer free workshops on how to start a CSA and connected me with the farmer from Monskhood Nursery in upstate NY. I am hoping to work with the farm over the summer to get certification to accept SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that used to be called food stamps) so that shares will be an option for people from a greater variety of economic means.

Some people questioned why I did not work with a more local farm since there are several nearby that have CSAs. Although I am certainly a big proponent of supporting local farmers, I was even more interested in creating something uniquely ours. The local farms already have CSAs with pick-up at their farms.  I thought it was more important to work with a farm that would deliver the CSA shares weekly to my school so that parents, teachers and staff in my school district would have an opportunity to connect with each other at school. My hope is that as the CSA grows, each of the elementary schools will start their own, and we can start to partner with more local growers.

(This post was shared on Green Thumb Thursday and Healthy, Happy, Green & Natural Party Hop.)

Growing, Harvesting and Seed Collecting

The beans I planted last week have already grown their first set of true leaves.    Below is a photo of the seedlings, grown from the black beans I collected last year.  I love how they grow with the seed coat still attached!   The tendril is from the Cascadian snap peas.  

Seed coat is still attached to the bean plant!

This week we ate our final installment of asparagus, along with lots of lettuce, kale, chives, cilantro, strawberries and some peas and garlic scapes.

Peas, asparagus, strawberries, lettuce and cilantro

Peas, garlic scapes, chives, cilantro, kale and strawberries

Elsewhere in the garden:

Clematis and rose

Mock Orange (Philadelphus) in all its glory

I've started collecting columbine seed (Aquilegia canadensis L.).  Lots of columbine are still in bloom, but the early bloomers have gone to seed.

Columbine seed pods, plus one visitor.

When the seed pods turn brown, it's time to collect the seed.   The small black seeds will rattle around and fall right into your hand if you turn them upside down.  The green seed pods are not yet ready for collection.   

The columbine seed pods start out green and closed,
and then gradually turn brown and open up. 

Columbine seeds ready to be collected.

I like to toss the seeds in areas that could use some more columbine color.  I save some seeds for later, but I seem to have the best success with columbine when I  scatter the seeds now in early summer, and let them over-summer, over-fall and overwinter outside in place.

(This post was shared on Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandelions and Green Thumb Thursday.)

Harvesting and planting more

Yesterday I went out to pick some basil leaves to have with dinner, and I discovered a handful of Cascadian snap peas were ready to be picked!  

 

Cascadian snap pea

I'm glad the peas are ready, because it's almost time to stop picking the asparagus.
Although this week we had no shortage of asparagus:

lots of asparagus this week

More lettuce, asparagus, strawberries and cilantro.

Today I harvested more peas, strawberries,
chives, cilantro, and lots of kale.

Aside from the basil which I planted from seed this spring, everything else that I harvested this week was either a perennial that I planted in a previous year (asparagus, strawberries, chives) or a volunteer that seeded itself from plants that went to seed last year (lettuce, kale, cilantro).

This week, the Reduce Footprints Change the World Wednesdays challenge (#CTWW) is to plant some food.   I decided to plant some of the bean and squash seed that I saved from last year.  

Black beans saved from last year, still in their pods.

A mixture of beans I saved including black beans and scarlet runner beans. 

Butternut squash seed saved from a particularly delicious squash.

 I planted the bean seeds along the fence where the peas are now so they'll have something to climb, and I planted two kinds of squash in small hills of compost right next to the beans - sort of a modified three sisters garden minus the corn.

compost hill

I encourage you to plant some food for the Change the World Wednesdays challenge and to check out the wonderful harvests at Daphne's Dandelions.  

 Elsewhere in the garden, the roses are in bloom along with foxglove, columbine, geraniums, irises, oxalis, forget-me-nots, bleeding heart, peonies, and more!

oxalis

geranium

columbine

foxglove

(This post was also shared on Healthy, Happy, Green & Natural Party Hop.)

Harvest Monday

This week I've been harvesting a lot of asparagus, kale and chives.  

Asparagus,  kale, and chives from the garden

To the kitchen

Straight into a frittata.  Very yummy!

Also, we had some lettuce

in a salad with chives

And, our first garden strawberries of the year!

I'm happy to have discovered Harvest Mondays at Daphne's Dandelions, where we can share what we are harvesting each week.  Some of the posts are beautiful - take a look.