Freshaire paint - totally worth it!

Well, I'm painting my room, and I was SO HAPPY to find that my local Home Depot finally offers a low-VOC choice!!! It was about 35% more than me getting "normal" paint.


Freshaire paints don't have quite the color selection of, say, Behr or Glidden (it's closer to Ralph Lauren's palatte), but I am blissfully happy with my choices of "Reef Pink" and "Arbor Vine"... and my sinuses are even more happy with the fact that there is barely any smell at all. One of my housemates, when I apologized for any smell he might have noticed, said "Oh! That was paint? It smelled a little funny, but i had no idea you had painted the room!"

I think that is pretty much a perfect endorsement of the product. That and my lack of migraine!

I painted two walls green and two pink, then added some funky striping running around the room.

Guest Post on Just Move Monday for the Zaftig Chicks

Over the past two months I've been doing probably a million, bajillion things, but one of the less-stressful ones has been to read some of the blogs on the fat-o-sphere feed.

That's how i came to know of Bianca & Sylvia, the Zaftig Chicks.

As a way to fight the stress of the past two months, i've been hot-yoga-ing a lot, and when the girls asked if anyone wanted to guest-contribute a blog post, it seemed like a nice opportunity to write about my practice. You can check it out here.

Meanwhile, although I haven't been posting anything here, I HAVE been tweeting, and those tweets relate to green things, including the chickens (now there are 15!). The garden has been producing the first tomatoes of the season, and my belly is READY to give them a home... I'll definitely share more as Dallas' harvests come in.

I've been doing a little "activist" stuff, too. My friend Molly and I went to check out the new TN headquarters of Repower America and then I went with a couple strangers to visit the offices of the two TN senators to tell them that I support the ACES act.

ALSO - I give a hearty thumbs-up to the Murfreesboro toothpaste I got from The Green Wagon, as well as the castile soap shampoo (i can't remember the name of it) that you can buy by the ounce (!). They'll be opening their East Nashville location oh-so-very soon, so you'll have 100% more opportunities to buy green!

Meanwhile, think good thoughts for me as I embark upon a quest for better living through altering my chemical composition with the help of the Pharmaceutical-Industrial Complex :(

25% off sale at The Green Wagon this Saturday!

Find your thrill(er)...

The Green Wagon's shaking off the summer weirdness and playing Michael Jackson tunes all weekend... plus everything's 25% off on Saturday.

I suggest trying the new toothpaste they have in stock - it's made in Murfreesboro!
And an Alchemy of Sol soap bar is NEVER a bad bet.

Cleaning up a broken CFL bulb...

Many thanks to my uncle for sending this link my way...

I knew that you had to recycle your CFL bulbs in a special way, but this is getting ridiculous! What a way to scare people away from using CFLs! I mean, come on folks, you should be more worried about eating tuna than breaking one bulb...

warning: cheapy cheaperson, susie homemaker, & hairy-armpitted feminist, all in one post!

Perhaps I have gotten my second green wind.
Or, perhaps I have just gotten progressively cheaper so that now i've swung over to the other side of being green - from trying to buy organic and buy green to not buying anything. new. ever.

I've been using freecycle like a fiend.
I traded in the Prius for a Yaris because it cut my car payment (hey - in my defense, the mpgs are comparable - check out this guy's blog).
I'm trying - again - to grow some tomatoes. This time, I'm also trying some lettuce and spinach! (more on this to come - I'm not going to provide details on the project until i see little green sprouts!)
And, perhaps the greenest/cheapest thing of all - I have started to make my own pantiliners. Yep. that's right. Pantiliner as in 'Stayfree', 'Always', and 'Kotex'. Except mine aren't big wads of plastic and cotton or paper or whatever else the "big three" use. They're made out of an old flannel shirt and a pair of terry-cloth shorts that I wore in middle school gym.

Now, if you're not as "susie homemaker" as I am (thanks to my roommate for that label...), you can buy cloth ones. They can be really pretty! Check out here, here or here.

But if you, too, need a project to keep you busy while you're watching some poor teenager cry her eyes out after getting rejected on American Idol, you can EASILY make your own!!

first, I used a pair of underwear to figure out how much coverage I needed and made myself a paper template, which I used to cut two pieces of cloth, one for the body-facing side and one for the underwear facing side:

Then, I used one of the cuffs off the flannel shirt for some extra padding on the inside of the thing (you can see above where I'd already started sewing it in before I got the bright idea to take some pictures):

Then, I put the outside faces of the two pieces of fabric together and used a looping stitch (I totally forget the name of the stitch, maybe a slip-stitch?) to sew about 3/4 of the way around the outside of the piece so that it was sewn inside-out and was like a little pocket that opened at the top. then, I squished the bottom up through the top so that it was right-side out but still open at the top. At that point, I went ahead and sewed up the top. This means that most of the piece has a nice hidden seam but at the top you can see the stitching. Oh well. Not like i'm going to be showing this off at a cocktail party. I used one of the buttons from the flannel shirt on the little flaps so i can button it around the crotch of my underwear.

Why do I like this?

Well, I would much rather have terry cloth against my skin than some weird amalgamation of cotton, plastic and paper.
Also, the stupid "wings" on the disposable ones always end up sticking to my skin and not to my underwear - they never leave sticky stuff on me, but it's kind of like pulling a band-aid off. not cool.
But ultimately, it's because I am sick and tired of buying something that I throw away! It ends up being between $10-$15 every month between pads and tampons and the other stuff a gal might want to buy.

Now, before you go saying, "would you want to re-use toilet paper, too, D? And what about the fact you'll be using water/energy to launder these?", let me say this:

a) some people DO have reusable toilet wipes (scroll down on that link to see her tidy little stack) which I think is awesomely cool and wish i had the energy to do and
b) i'm not tossing out my underwear when/if I 'leak' so why not just have a piece of cloth that is meant to get dirty? I'm a lot more scared of some of the cleaning rags I have than I am of some stains on my unmentionables.
c) Maybe it takes a bigger carbon footprint to wash something than to just throw it away, but poo on that. I prefer to reuse, I like cloth on my tush, and I feel totally crafty having made these.
d) there's no way to quantify the weird looks your roommate will give you when you sit on the couch working on one of these bad boys, which makes them priceless.

So, there you have it. So far, I have two of these bad boys. They get better the more that I make. I'm in the middle of a third one and I have plenty more cloth to use before I'll need to cannibalize another piece of old clothing! The real trick seems to be getting good needles and thread. I've been using the thread out of those little dollar-sewing-kits (read = I've been cheap) so it breaks a lot. New needles and thread are on my buy-when-you-feel-less-cheap list.


Anyway, a happy recession/depression to you all!
a post on gardening will come.
eventually :)

The Green Wagon ROCKS

If you haven't yet stopped in to check out how awesome Jen Casale's Green Wagon is, you are missing out!

Check out the über-cute pants I got for my valentine this year...
They're made by a lady in Lebanon, TN, from old sweaters!

Go Check out The Green Wagon!!!

You guys, this is very exciting!

My friend Jen Casale is opening her store, The Green Wagon, today at 10 AM.

I am sure that this place is going to be AMAZING. Jen is brilliant, creative, and all sorts of superlatives.

Go check it out and buy something!

I want some of these

Ideal Bite, an enewsletter I subscribe to, is selling bags with their logo.
They are super-cute... when i have some cash to throw at those folks, I'm going to buy some.

For now, go subscribe to their newsletter - my designer friend Molly put me onto them and they are sassy and funny and ALWAYS topical! Love 'em!

bad habits, good habits, red fish blue fish... what?

So Tyler, our new part-timer, has been making coffee in the mornings at work and I simultaneously love him and hate him for it. Because I love the coffee but I really ought not drink it. It turns me into a jumping bean.

I had been furtively sneaking small amounts in the little disposable starbucks cups that we had left over from some event Lauren did, and that seemed sufficient to keep me from drinking much of it, but it also meant I was using disposable cups :(

anyway, I'm a sucker for sale items at starbucks and snagged a lovely mug there the other day for $3, so now I have my own coffee mug for my desk at work.

In the same beverage-related vein, after all the hubbub over BPA in Nalgene & other plastic bottles, I used it as an excuse to pick up a Camelbak for me and for mom.

They are both on my desk right now, lovely and green in the flourescent lighting.

thanks, Mr. Hunt

So, back when i was buying the Prius, I thought long and hard about the impact that its actual production (well, the production of any new car) would have on the environment. I had heard about the toxicity of the batteries and the problems with producing them, and I knew that buying anything new is not really a green activity.

However, it's always nice to get some concrete numbers to go with what you already sort of know. Many thanks to Jeff for the link.

I did pretty much know this when i decided to purchase the little bugger, but I hoped then, and I do still hope, that my purchase wasn't stupid. I hope that by hopping on the hybrid bandwagon, I helped just a little to push forward hybrid and electric technology.

::sigh:: I don't know. I've already put 25K on the Prius over the past year, so, according to the article, I'll have overcome that new/old car carbon gap. Of course, if I just stopped driving altogether, that would be even greener...

Thanks, Whole Foods!

Whole Foods finally got some biodegradable meal boxes that actually fit a whole meal. They're made of bullrushes.

Yay!
The plastic ones that I had to use when I forgot my rubbermaid one always irritated me.

I am really looking forward to this weekend - hopefully Monday I will actually have caught up with everything and can focus on having a regular schedule, complete with actual posts rather than silly posts. I am pretty proud of myself for providing a picture for this one, despite its simplicity :)

Good news abounds as we head into March

Well, today is a red-letter day in my greening little world - it is my last day at my current job, meaning that I will be starting my new job on Monday! I told you before about some of the green-issues I had with my job, but another one was that I was still driving too much for my tastes - about 20 miles round trip a day - make that up to 40 if i went home or out for lunch.

The new job (can you hear me squealing with excitement?) is only .6 miles from my intended new condo (still waiting on the old one to sell before I can get into the new one, but even if the world ended and I moved back in, it's only 3.3 miles from the old one!)! I WILL GET TO WALK TO WORK!

I cannot tell you how exciting this is. As much as I love the little Prius, she's been put through her paces with these 40 mile drives back and forth from Murfreesboro, and walking to work will seem like HEAVEN (I hear Sinatra crooning faintly in the background...)

And that 40 mile drive is weighing even more heavily on me with the rising gas prices (gas in the 'boro hit $3.09 last weekend, the highest I've seen it down there - the highest I've ever seen was $3.33 on the corner of Belmont and 21st after Katrina). And timely as ever, my uncle popped this in my inbox this morning - Volkswagen is unveiling a hybrid that's supposed to get 69.9 mpg.

So a happy Leap Day to you all! VU Baseball began last week, and the Music City Classic is underway as I type. Come on Spring, get sprung already!

Greening the dogs

So, I have a good excuse. Last Friday, blogger wasn't allowing me access. That's my story and I'm using it for all it's worth. Never mind the fact I've felt like roadkill or that I'm still living at Matt's. but I digress...

For those of you who don't know, I've hooked up with Nashville PAW, writing something for their bi-monthly issues. The current issue (you can download a .pdf here) has my article about how to deal with the death of a pet.

What brings it up here, thought, is my next assignment - writing about how to go green with your pet! I'm really excited about this one, since I've already been making efforts to green up Madeline and Georgia, and I thought that I'd devote a post to what I've been doing with them, as a way to get geared up for the article.

For her whole life, Georgia has been pad-trained. This is thanks to the efforts of mom and dad, who managed to train a mutt to pee only inside a little blue square. Over the years, many of my friends have been alternately fascinated and grossed out (high school friends seemed to take it in stride, but over this past year, my poor roommate, Maggie, just couldn't stand it). When Georgia came to live with me in Nashville, she continued on her pad plan, and with the occasional weird accident (we think it's more of a political statement than 'accident'), she's done pretty well, even though she's 15.

Madeline, on the other hand, is NOT pad trained. She is insane. Ceasar Milan and I are trying to work through this, slowly but surely. We have had several successes. We are going on walks in the evening, which seem to chill her out a little bit. She does, generally, let me know when she wants to go outside to pee. But since I am driving so far to work these days, she is now spending her days in the bathroom, with a puppy pad that - ::shock:: ::awe:: she uses! This was a major victory for us. Then, last night, I caught her using Georgia's pad! This is wonderful! Still, she has her accidents, but I got her some Pooch Pants for times when i just can't monitor her every move, and things are working out well.

So - what's so green about this, you ask? Using those blue pads is AWFUL! It's like using disposable diapers! YUCK!

Well, about 6 months ago, I started experimenting with washable alternatives to those things. What I've ended up with is a combination of using washable pads that are meant for baby mattresses and putting 1/2 towels on top of them. The pee soaks in, but the poo gets tossed in the toilet. The pads get reused for a few days, but the used towels go in a trash can that (IS STIIIIIIINKY!) gets washed at least once a week. I'm using more water, but less stuff is ending up in the landfill.

I also found a really cool link today that fascinated me - here's a clip:

The Fairbanks North Star Borough estimates there are over 20,000 dogs within the 7,000 square mile borough. In Alaska, dogs are used for transportation, recreation and competitive sports. All these dogs produce a large volume of dog manure. Prior to this study the recommended disposal method for dog waste was to tightly seal it in plastic bags and haul it to the landfill. One musher reported that he threw dog waste over the river bank. Another said he tied the dogs on the river in the winter so the waste would wash away during the spring. Pollution from dog waste poses a serious threat to water quality, wildlife and public health.

WOW! Anyway, it's about how you can compost dog poo. Now, if I were cool like my brother and lived in a house, I could have a compost bin and a garden. But since I'm a city girl, into the sewer it goes.

So, that's my big 'green' project as far as the dogs go. They also are using Mrs. Meyer's Oatmeal Pet Shampoo and this new freshener stuff I just got from Pure Ayre. I'm looking forward with Madeline, who (since she goes outside) will probably need some sort of flea repellent. I got this Sentry product that I am going to try - it's all essential oils.

Georgia seems to have adapted to the towels-instead-of-blue-pads just fine, and the shampoo is a delightful experience for me, so we're pretty happy.

Well, onward and upward. We're venturing into March Madness season, folks, so things can only get more insane! I'm off to the VU vs. UT game tonight - catch it on ESPN if you know what's good fer ya!

New Year's Resolution - stop whining and start acting

I'm pretty sure that, with my hamburger-part-2 post, I hit rock bottom.

I was pretty depressed about price versus cost.
Probably, this depression came from the fact i was eating crap (read: free crap).
I feel SO MUCH BETTER when i eat fruit for breakfast and spinach salads for dinner!

Anyway, just about the time I hit "publish" on that post, I started reading Going Green: "A Step-A-Day Program for Lazy Suburbanites". It's a blog by a mom who is making one change a day toward going green.

WOW. She is so positive, ambitious, creative, and driven! One change a day! Reading through all of her past posts, I have decided to get busy doin' instead of being busy whining.

Thanks to an awesome Christmas present from my brother, a "Living Green" page-a-day calendar, I think I'll have an easier time of keeping perspective on all of this.

After all, I already do some pretty green stuff without really thinking about it... so perk up, D!

- I don't use paper towels anymore (still using toilet paper, though... there are some people who are much braver than I am!)
- I don't run the water hardly at all when i brush my teeth
- The heat hasn't been on all winter, and I've used the fireplace like 3 times.
- I'm not showering and/or washing my hair as much. I find that, when I'm doing *nothing* but sitting all day (i.e. not going out for dinner with friends or going to a meeting during lunch), I don't need to shower every day. My day job really is conducive to not showering as often, so if all I'm doing in a day is going to work and back, i can shower every other day. Washing my hair every other day has become so much of a habit that I forgot to wash my hair the other morning on an "on" day! It didn't make too much of a difference, really, so i might need to re-evaluate the every-other-day thing.

Stuff I still consciously think about:

- Recycling. Some days, I just want to throw stuff "away". Since I'm in the middle of a giant house purge (moving soon, maybe?), I'm getting rid of a lot of stuff, and it's very tempting to just throw it in the trash. The sheer volume is overwhelming. I have been able to set some stuff aside for eBay, and recycle some parts of things (cereal boxes, for example) - other stuff (damn those envelopes with plastic windows!) seems like it takes too much mental energy to figure out if it can be recycled.
- Turning off lights. I have to consciously make myself turn off lights, because I'm so lazy I'd really rather not - so it's still not a habit. But I'm getting there!
- The dogs' mess. The topic of Georgia being on reusable puppy pads deserves a post of its own - but suffice to say that, though I've got it set up so that cleaning up after the dogs is relatively green, there are still parts of it that are hard. When we travel, Georgia uses reusable pads and I use paper towels to clean up messes. When I give them baths, I use too much water. The Green Pets Initiative is still a work in progress! More on that later.
- Treating my car gently. It really requires presence of mind to maximize my use of the Prius. Easing up on acceleration, turning it off when i run inside somewhere, driving at 60 on the highway instead of 75, using the windows instead of the a/c - all of this really takes concentration for me.
- Buying stuff. Christmas had me thinking about how much stuff I and my family buy. It's really quite staggering. Even with my recent reductions, we're still going through SO MUCH STUFF - which creates trash, of course. I did some reading over the past week about "green" Christmas presents - buying handmade, giving sustainable gifts (events or services rather than things), and one of the items I stumbled on (I can't find it now) was about how one woman asked for things like having a family member take one less shower a week - this was a gift to her because it not only helped her in her pursuit of being greener, but it also meant that if she wanted to take a longer shower every once in a while, she could rest easy knowing that someone else was using less water so she could enjoy that luxury.

So, moving forward into 2008, I'm very optimistic. I don't expect to ever fully change my stripes (my packrat tendencies are primal, somehow), but developing new habits is good practice for life as well as "living green". The page-a-day calendar will help me stay focused on my desire to develop good habits, which is what I hope 2008 will be about.

grocery bags and the apocalypse

Okay... a little extreme, I know, except...

I have this eerie vision in my head that morphs that 'I Am Legend ' shot of the deer running through the streets of post-apocalypse NYC into a shot of Nashville's Broadway with millions of plastic bags scudding along the empty lanes down into the river. I really must stop watching TV so much.

Anyway, on Monday I went to Whole Foods, and I had once again forgotten my reusable Ikea bag. Problem is, it's so huge that it really doesn't work for my little one-person, two-or-three-meals trips to the grocery. I joked with the checkout girl that in addition to wanting paper bags, I'd take a healthy dose of guilt to go along with them. Sadly, Whole Foods does not stock guilt, but luckily I had my own to pull out. So, upon my return home, I took a few minutes out of my mad dash to do two weeks worth of laundry to sit down and sew together the bottoms of some of my old tank tops (during which I saw the preview for I Am Legend and thus we've come full circle).

I'm going to use these as reusable grocery sacks. I only made two since I want to try them out before sewing up the bottoms of what could conceivably be wearable shirts... and since I rarely use more than two bags at the grocery anyway, this should be a good start. I know I'll need to sew up more, though, given my propensity to completely forget to take my own bags. I'll start with these two and then stock up the Prius with 10 or so.

Good thing I did that, because my lovely Aunt Louise sent a site called One Bag At A Time. Check out their breakdown of the life of a grocery sack! Holy moly!

That's the sort of stuff we need! Hard numbers to calculate impact! That's why I'm so excited about the new curriculum at Warren Wilson (I swear I'll post this next) - maybe we can figure out how to communicate these metrics (look at me with my shiny corporate lingo!) to broad audiences!

scary but cool experience - call your congressman!

Okay, so thanks to the wonders of Facebook (O, Facebook, what would I do without you?), I found out that H.R. 3221 is going to be brought up for a vote this week.

Here's part of the note from the creator of the group 'Advocates for Energy and Environmental Policy' Gabriel Koch...

At some point this week (the specific day has not been set), the House of Representatives will vote on whether to increase fuel efficiency to 35 miles per gallon and whether to use 15% of our electricity from renewable energy sources.

PLEASE CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES, both where you attend school and where your home is, and ask them to vote for this bill, H.R. 3221. You can find out who your Representative is and what their number is at www.house.gov

If you have a second, pick up the phone and call your Rep.

Davidson County is District 5 (with some of the south in District 7 - check out a map here.), and our Rep is Jim Cooper. I called his D.C. office today at 6:30PM EST and someone answered!

It was a spur of the moment thing, so I'm not sure that I sounded as well spoken as I might have liked, but the guy who answered was really nice, and took my name and address.

I am not sure if I've done anything useful, given Toyota and Detroit railing against it, but it was really easy (if sort of scary - I got a little stage fright!), and felt very green indeed.

So! Go forth and call! And if you can do it with free long distance, even better!

Irritating news from the auto-industry

I just got wind of an article in Newsweek about Toyota and how their actions speak louder than their words when it comes to being green. (Thanks, NoImpactMan, for the link!)

Basically, Toyota is talking a big game (have you seen their Why Not? ads? - if you go here and click on the Advertising navigation link, you can see the commercial), but they aren't fully committed to lowering mpgs.

Toyota—in contrast to Honda and Nissan—sided with Detroit to try to block legislation currently before Congress to boost fuel economy for all new vehicles to 35mpg by 2020, up from 25mpg today. Toyota, in a familiar Motown refrain, says achieving such a hard target is not technologically feasible

I think that "technologically feasible" here actually means "financially feasible." They can't reach the target number for their quarterly earnings if they have to go so high on mpgs. Yet another reason I wish more companies could go "B" (here's info on B-Corporations from a previous post) - because that bottom line is most likely the reason Toyota is waffling so badly. The Prius isn't enough of a money maker (because of the gas-electric propulsion system), so Toyota is also producing vehicles like the 14 mpg Tundra pickup, which has a profit margin of $10K. The thing is, I probably would have paid $5K more for my Prius! Yes, a big reason I bought it was the mpg factor, but another BIG factor was that I wanted to support green technology! So if more money is required, LET'S DO IT! Argh!

I'm sad that my Prius purchase went to a company that is not full-on behind the green movement. I still love my prius mightily (she's getting about 55 mpg right now), but I'm disappointed that the company I thought I was supporting in their efforts is trying to undermine my efforts (which are so small compared to what they can do).

Man, maybe it's the weather, but my posts are depressing lately. I promise posts that are more optimistic soon!

Vegetarianism, Veganism, and the "All-American" Hamburger, part 1

What drove the composition of this post (an expansion of a comment on a post over at AnimalBlawg, a blog written by some acquaintances from undergrad) was something that happened to me a couple of weeks ago. However, in the writing of it, I really found it's too big to tackle in one post, so look out for part 2 next.

About a year ago, I found a soup that I really like - Mexican–Style Chicken Tortilla soup. But I really hate the chicken in it. It is tasteless and rubbery and totally ruins the rest of the soup! So I’ve almost stopped buying it in preference for vegetable soup. It really depresses me that i don’t get to enjoy the ricey-corny-black beany goodness that that tortilla soup could be because of the nasty chicken. I figured it was just because it was cheap soup (hence, cheap chicken in it)

A few Thursdays back, I went to Hillwood High School out in Belle Meade to give a "Getting In" strategy session to a bunch of juniors and seniors (over 60 people were there! it was awesome!), and the PTA served Mrs. Winners chicken for dinner. Being that I am cheap, when they offered me a couple of pieces after the session, I promptly said thank you and then thanked the universe for the free meal. I started eating on the drive home, and at first it was very tasty. But as I ate, I got increasingly queasy. I figured it was because I was driving, but the whole thing really hit me as I pulled into the parking lot at home and finished off the last piece. I was really disgusted by the *thought* of what I was eating.

Now, I can't imagine that I'm anywhere near going vegan. Is this really me? I'm thinking... am i really turning into a leftist whacko that starts asking restaurants if they're cooking with animal oils?

Well, it is possible that I am. I mean, when they started serving Crispanis at Panera, I asked them to show me the ingredients label on the tomato sauce to see if it contained sugar of HFCS.

But I still am resistant to the idea of putting that label on myself. My vegetarian leanings mostly manifest in my day-to-day small choices as opposed to an overall lifestyle choice - I still do heartily attack a bison burger at Ted’s Montana Grill on occasion - but on a daily basis, I daydream of eating black beans and rice or a spinach and mushroom salad. I often wonder if it’s actually the burger I’m enjoying, as opposed to the idea of a burger (so ingrained in my middle-class, white-bread mindset!).

AnimalBlawg explained that the source of this may be umami

"Umami is the fifth taste, often called “savory.” We have “umami” taste receptors on our tongues that detect glutamates, found in protein-rich foods. And in uncreative diets, meat is the staple protein-rich food."

I will definitely be exploring non-meat ways to fulfill this 5th taste... although I see it playing out more as a way to avoid eating chicken as opposed to a way to avoid animal products entirely. Mostly, this is because I am lazy. And when someone puts free food, or easy food, in front of me, somehow I forget my desire to eat organic and vegetarian.

This Thanksgiving, we did cook a turkey, and it was my job to take care of the leftovers - pull all the meat off the bones. Now, I did enjoy the turkey/cranberry/whitebread sandwiches that were the reason we cooked the turkey - but after pulling all that meat off the bird, I wasn't interested in eating it anymore.

A more recent post at Animal Blawg introduced me to the fact that Ben Franklin dabbled in veganism - go read it! It really describes perfectly the situations I find myself in. Yes, i find that not eating animal products is cheaper. However, sometimes I am so drawn in by the smell and memory of the taste of food that I dig in without thinking. Ahhh, rationalism.

"So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for every thing one has a mind to do."

Yes, Ben. This is exactly the problem.
Up next - sure, I feel like chicken is gross, but how about the economic impact of being an omnivore?

Yeah, jobrad, gettin' on the green bandwagon!

Check out Joseph Bradley's latest post: he dug up an article about a Hummer that's getting 60 mpg... that's no 150 mpg, but for those testosterone-driven amongst us, it's a start.

My worry over being clean while being green, part 2

So now you all know about my historical mania over being clean, but what I didn't talk about yesterday was the product-end of the whole thing.

One of the first times I was really confronted with what we're putting into our environment came from my friend AblePonder, when she told me about how she was looking for a shampoo without sulfates. AP was living off-campus in a darling little house, and we were both taking that Oil & Water Use class. While talking about the expense of living off-campus and the expense of living, generally, she mentioned something about the sulfates in shampoo, and that started a domino effect in my head about the stuff I use to clean, both me and my living space.

Now, it wasn't immediate, but it got me curious, and then curiouser. I was shocked at the price sticker on "environmentally safe" shampoos and cleaning products - and especially when something is expensive, I'm slow to change. I bought some shampoo from my stylist, Shana, that was sulfate free; she was selling it because it was safer for color-treated hair (oh yes, that's another topic altogether, one that I'm afraid to start researching). But I started talking to her about it, and got more than I bargained for.

Shana had just started buying Melaleuca products, and got me to go to one of those in-house presentations (Amway, anyone?) where they convince you to buy their stuff. I was not really enthused about it, because I didn't really have an extra $50 a month to spend on something silly.

But then, of course, due to peer pressure I started using the stuff. I'll quit after a few months, I thought. But then I started taking the vitamins. I don't know if it's psychosomatic or what, but I sleep better and have more energy when I take the vitamins on a regular basis. And since I was buying the vitamins, I started trying the other stuff, too. This was around the time that I moved out of my Hillsboro Village apartment and into my Green Hills condo, and I was cleaning a LOT - cleaning the apartment to move out, cleaning the new house to move in... and I used the Melaleuca cleaning stuff to do it. It didn't burn my throat and nose, and it didn't make me dizzy, like 409 or Clorox cleanup does.

As I've used this stuff more and more, I keep being surprised by it. Using their body wash & deodorant, I don't smell at the end of the day (or the next day, since I've started alternating days on showering). I always felt like using the Olay body wash and Secret deodorant that I was just covering up my smell - but with this new stuff I really feel like I just smell like myself, not a stinky, gross version of myself.

Still, I wasn't really sold on the "Melaleuca" label... until my ex-roommate Alex moved out. Alex's dog, Chance, had assisted Alex in making the carpet in their bedroom really gross. It's pretty near impossible to keep the carpets clean anyway, what with the city dirt combined with the tar-sealed parking lot outside and the wood floors in the rest of the condo. I told Alex that he'd need to clean the carpets after he moved out. Well, Alex was pretty strapped for money, and so he and his girlfriend tried to clean the carpets themselves. They got into my cleaning closet and got out the "Sol-u-mel" stuff, which Melaleuca bills as a triple-threat stain-remover, deodorizer and cleaning product.

I sort of hate myself for raving like this (I feel like I sound like an infomercial), but that stuff is AMAZING. Case-in-point was Alex's carpet. It went from dingy-grey to the off-white "ecru" it was when we moved in! I was really stunned. Not only that, but I started using it as an additive to my laundry when i did sheets and towels - it removes smells COMPLETELY. I wash my dogs' towels and rags, there is NO TRACE of urine or "dog"smell. My friend Steph used it to wash stuff that her cats had peed on, and it also came out of the laundry smelling like new.

Now, AP uses a lot of vinegar and baking soda when she cleans, and I've taken that up, as well. Using vinegar and water on the wood floors seems to be keeping that nasty black dust at bay, and baking soda is a great laundry and cleaning additive.

Frankly, even though I'm impressed by the Melaleuca stuff, there's still a part of me that wonders if I'm not making a mountain out of a mole-hill. Would using vinegar and baking soda on everything - from my hair to my laundry to my floors - not be just as effective? And cheaper?

I'm still quite in the middle of this thought process. With the new Whole Foods & Whole Body down the street, I've been wanting to try to get away from Melaleuca (because there's a minimum to buy every month, and there's a shipping charge, both bank-breakers - and the shipping isn't a very green option).

Any suggestions for stuff that you love would be very welcome! What do you use to clean?

Taking the bad with the good, part 3: the Prius

Hymotion will be making their Hybrid conversion packs available to individuals in early 2008!!!

So I thought that today I would tell you all the story of my Prius, dubbed Thumper by my friend Saralyn.

Back in May, things were going well for me. I was up for a "fast track" promotion and I had finally decided that not only I was ready to make the commitment of buying a car, but I also knew which car I wanted.

The Toyota Prius had been on my mind for several years (all through driving two cars that I hated, that guzzled gas and coolant), and after much thought and research, I decided that it was worth the monthly car payment, and I took the leap. I bought a Prius (hahaha - "bought" meaning "put myself into debt for")

1. Though the payment would take up the entirety of my expendable income, I would save $60 a month or more in gas (depending on how many trips I took down to Murfreesboro & Georgia to see my family), and I should be getting a tax credit for the purchase, but it remains to be seen how much (I'm crossing my fingers so hard i'm cutting off circulation!)

2. Though I would have the mental stress of a new car (worrying about every little scratch and ding, driving thoughtfully instead of balls-to-the-wall abusive like with my other cars), I would have the opportunity to add a Prius to the road, helping to "spread the word" and talk about the technology.

3. Though the eco-cost of producing a new vehicle would be large, I would be supporting the hybrid technology, putting out fewer emissions and using less gas.

It was a lesser of two evils situation, and I chose to take the leap.

The landing has also been a take-the-bad-with-the-good experience, and here's why:

I didn't get that promotion (what a lesson in putting the cart before the horse), so now I'm consuming lots of mac-and-cheese, bananas and water at home, and I'm going into debt. This is pretty bad, because I love to eat fresh and organic. I love the new Whole Foods and would gladly spend my entire paycheck there, eating salads and breads and milk. So eating like a college student really stinks.

On the good hand, though, I am IN LOVE with the Prius. She runs so smoothly that it's fun to drive, I fill her up once a month normally instead of 3 or 4 times, and I get into conversations about her all the time. She gives me an excuse to talk about why I bought her, which lets me talk about Greener Nashville, shopping locally, eating organic... all the things that I love to talk about right now because I'm so obsessed with them. I feel good when I get in the car in the morning, instead of dreading that i'll be stuck on the side of the road, the car overheating because it guzzled a gallon of DexCoolant in just a month (thanks, Pontiac...). She also has a lot of trunk space (ahhh, we have so much in common).

So, owning the Prius has been both a bad and a good thing, but I do feel that it was the right decision to make. I was even more convinced of that when I saw the news about Hymotion's conversion packs.

Hymotion's Battery Range Extender Modules (BREMs) convert Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs) into Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles (PHEV) with 100+mpg fuel efficiency...

Right now, they're only available to fleets, but soon they'll be available to anyone. Obviously, they're going to cost thousands of dollars, but tax credits will supposedly be offered to those buying them (the bill has only been introduced, so this isn't for sure yet).

Back when I was thinking about buying it, I was sad that there wasn't a plug-in option. Yes, the energy from an outlet in my home is coming from fossil fuel (about 60%), but in buying the BREM, I would be one step closer to being independent of fossil fuel, just like i was a step closer with the purchase of my Prius.

I do think that buying less is one of the strategies I want to use for reducing my carbon footprint, but also think that the development of technology is going to be an important way for us, collectively, to reduce our consumption. It's not realistic to think that we will all completely stop driving, stop using electricity and stop eating food from far-away places. So, if we can do both at once - reduce our consumption while funding the development of new things, maybe we can get somewhere.

I just have to keep the idea of small steps in mind, because size is relative. After all, the Prius purchase was a big step for me, but a very small drop in the bucket for the alternative fuel industry. I hope that that big step was the right step to take.

Taking the bad with the good, part 2: my A/C addiction

Happy Friday, all!
Nov. 5 is my 25th birthday, so I have all sorts of fun plans for the weekend... and the Nashville weather is cooperating so well.
This is definitely my favorite time of year... the slant of the sunlight, the chilly nights that call for a jacket, the changing leaves...

But by far my favorite part lately is that I have been A/C free for three weeks now! The windows are thrown open, the door is open with a gate up to keep the dogs from wandering off, and I am looking forward to my electric bill.

It feels so good to have it turned off. The air is cold, which I love (I would be happy to have life at 40 degrees all year round), but it's fresh, too. Yes, I live in the city, but even the city-dirt has a tang to it that the A/C doesn't provide.

Colin over at No Impact Man talked about changing social norms a while back, and it got me thinking about having my front door open. I really like it - I like saying hello to the neighbors as they walk by, and the dogs love it, too, laying on the door mat and watching the squirrels and birds and people. This morning, because my door was open, my neighbor Sarah and her new roommate came by to say hi and we talked for 15 minutes or so.

I wish more people had their doors open around here - I'm not a social butterfly, but it did feel good to get to talk to Sarah for a bit. But thinking about it has got me apprehensive about summer - yes, it's far away, but I'm enjoying my open door and windows so much that I'll hate to see it end.

And at this point, I know I will see it end, because I haven't been able to live without cold air. In the summer, the A/C has to be below 73 at night or I can't sleep! I've tried (the penny-pincher in me had me turning it off to try it out), but i just ended up tossing and turning. Growing up (and now) my family keeps the house around 69 degrees, and we've never used the heat. We did have space heaters for the frigid winter months, but in general, our house was cold year round. Thinking about giving up the A/C, for me, is akin to thinking about not driving - it is so ingrained in my ritmo de vida that I am actually afraid to give it up! Changing this social norm, for me, is a scary proposition.

So I'm going to use these next cold months to think about how I can reduce my A/C consumption come spring. Maybe I'll just end up being a really sweaty person? Or maybe I'll give in and hope that by not using the heat for as long as I can this winter, when I turn down the thermostat this coming spring, I'll have been able to balance out my footprint a little.

Taking the bad with the good, part 1: CFL bulbs

A happy Friday to you all! I hope that, wherever you are, you/those you love/your things are not on fire. I've been watching the news and feeling very doomy and gloomy, but I heard this morning that a very sweet quilt shop out there is doing just fine.

Anyhow, today's post will try not to be as big-picture and pseudo-philosophical as the last few.

My consumer habits are, to say the least, less than perfect. Now, I haven't gone into Wal-Mart for over a month now, which I'm very proud of. I don't want to give them any more of my money. But still, I buy pre-packaged foods (oh, frozen Kashi meals, why do you have to be so good?) and I buy non-local foods and i get my cleaning supplies & vitamins shipped USPS ground from Melaleuca.

But, there are some green-alternative choices that I've been preoccupied with lately.

I bought some CFL bulbs to replace burnt-out filament bulbs in my condo. There are a few lights that I leave on pretty much all the time - the laundry room, where the dogs' stuff is (the vet confirmed that leaving lights on for them will help, given that they both have really bad cataracts), and my closet, which has an automatic doorframe switch that drives me crazy because the door doesn't latch well and therefore constantly pops open, leaving the light on. I also put one in the shower part of the bathroom. I don't want the dogs constantly running head-first into the washer/dryer (they do enough running into things as it is), and I'm not really doing a lot of small-print-reading in the shower or closet, so I thought that some low-watt CFLs would be a good swap for those places.

A while back, my dad put CFLs in all of their out-door lights and in their closets, and I HATED them. The light emitted really messed with my eyes. German Chancellor Angela Merkel complained about them, too (in case my opinion isn't quite enough - see paragraph 4). But those places don't really require much focus for me, so I gave it a go.

Thus far, it's working out well enough. The light means that I don't run into things. And the ones that I bought aren't the same as the ones that dad used, so they're growing on me.

However, and it's a big however, right after I bought the bulbs, I read on Slate.com about Wal-Mart pushing to sell fluorescent light bulbs.

CFLs appear destined to become a consumer staple, either because hordes of people realize they're cheaper or because the alternative will be prohibited... Thus far, green goods have been pitched to the top: expensive Priuses for guilty yuppies, solar installations for rich techies. But to have real impact, energy-efficiency products need to make economic sense to those who congregate on the lower rungs of the economic ladder.

That's awesome, I thought. It's good to hear that the green thing is making its way down to us normal people. I mean, just because I want to have a solar panel doesn't mean I can afford to get it. I pretty much put all my eggs in the basket that is my Prius. Maybe Adam Werbach is slowly-but-surely making a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

But here's the kicker - those CFL bulbs shouldn't be thrown away in your normal garbage (thanks, NoImpactMan, for noting this!). The EPA isn't very helpful in explaining this to Joe Schmo on the street, but you can find info from them here. The EnergyStar website doesn't mention this until the very end of their page about the bulbs. CFLs are considered Household Hazardous Waste. Davidson County has a recycling facility off of Trinity Lane...

It seems like an awful lot of effort to exert when I thought initially that I was doing something good for the environment. I am willing to make that effort, but I wonder how many other people will also be willing? It's the same sort of thing as the beverage companies not wanting to be responsible for all of the empty plastic bottles that end up out there (see my post on Keep America Beautiful). NoImpactMan's solution is a pretty good one (see the end of his post about it), I think, but I'm skeptical and cynical enough to think that it won't happen without a fight.

All of this new technology is good, but if its side-effects are going to be polluting just as much if not more than the old technology that it replaced, we're just succeeding in fooling ourselves that we're going something good.

This all goes back to my main goal - think about what I choose to buy and do. I'd love to hear from y'all how you discipline yourself so that you do remember to be thoughtful. It's kind of and endless loop for me, so I've had to try and make it a habit, so that I don't have to consciously remember.

In my next post, I'll be talking about my Prius and it's battery - definitely another one of those, mixed-blessing, lesser-of-two-evils choices in my life.