So far outside the box

We’ve all heard of thinking outside the box.   Check out this video,  it’s worth the time 10 minutes or so it takes.   http://www.consciousmedianetwork.com/video/2010/061810.htm

These guys just reinvented the box and added more than a hint of green.
What if they were able to change just the roads or sidewalks in all the housing developments all over this country or what if they changed just the parking lots?  The idea of doing the whole USA is almost too much to comprehend, but small-scale projects, Why not?
Engineers like these ones make it possible for people like me to hope that there will in-fact be a positive change in our lifetime or at least in our children’s life time.  Doom and gloom only gets you so far, showing people making a difference is inspiring and uplifting.
Has this video inspired you to think outside the box? If so what would you create, implement, design etc to help make the Earth a greener, healthier planet?  I’m inspired!  I’ll let you know what I would like to do in tomorrows post.

Please share this video the more people that get involved the stronger the movement gets

Conversation with a preschooler

Have you ever talked to a preschooler? It is one of the funniest, sweetest things I’ve ever had the chance to do.  I’m sure it’s more enjoyable since the preschooler is my own, but preschoolers are a funny breed.   They are learning about the world around them and every experience is new and hopefully exciting.  Sometimes my preschooler takes things so  literal all I can do is think yeah technically that’s right, but not really what I meant. Like eight & ate.  A resent misunderstanding “If I eight it is it still this many” (holding up 8 little fingers) Um, OK anyone else want to explain this one?  Today’s misunderstanding might be my all time favorite, for now at least.

Exact conversation:
Me “B we need to brush your hair it’s a birds nest”
B “OK mom” as she’s scratching her ear
Me “does your ear hurt?”
B “I think the bird built the nest in my ear”

It’s the innocents that makes them so literal and it’s the innocents that I want to try and keep for my girls as long as I can, as I’m sure most parents do.  I think that might be why it’s so hard for a lot of parents to talk to their kids about the environment and being green.  I think a lot of the Green Eco lifestyle comes out of fear and being scared of what will happen if we don’t live green.

We have started talking to B about living green. We don’t use the term “being green”, could you imagine what a preschooler might think if you told them they were going to be “green”. B already knows that banana peels or conana (as she calls them) don’t go into the garbage, but go into the chicken bowl.  She reminds us to bring our canvas bags to the store and don’t forget to turn off the lights when you leave a room cause she will not let it slide.  She also knows that we eat organic foods because “they are better for everyone.” All these little things are fun, helpful & practical. We are trying to encourage her to start habits now that are Eco friendly, that she will do w/out thinking about as she gets older.

We also talk about not wasting things like water, food & even toys. Toys I know sounds weird, but really everything that is throw away ends up in land fills.  We try to give all of the things in our house a second home when we are done with them. We involve B in the process of going through old stuff & bringing them to the goodwill, salvation army or where ever they need to go. Just another habit.  So why do this & how do you start?

I think anything that has to do with young kids and big topics it needs to be brought to their level and have a positive spin on it. With this particular topic I think the more fun you make it the more kids will enjoy it. Make a game out of it.  See who can remember to turn off the most lights each day or build a container to start a compost bin and turn it into a family project, nothing says fun like worms and dirt.

I think the why is simple, young kids need to learn to care about the world around them at a younger age than any other generation has before.

I would love to hear more ways that you make being Green fun for your kids.

B is already sharing all her Green secrets with little K

Up on the Rooftop II

I’m sitting in a coffee house looking out across the street and guess what I see..  Super flat roofs, wasted space basically.  I look at the bakery across the street and think about how cool it would be if they had a roof garden. Once you made your purchase you could venture upstairs to eat your sweet treat and drink your coffee in the fresh air.  Isn’t this space that you are paying for but not really using?  Why not maximize your patrons experience by offering them an extra treat on a sunny day.  In California this would be an almost year round perk.  What about places like Arizona where it’s super hot during the day, wouldn’t it be nice to go to a restaurant when the sun had slipped below the horizon and sit up high where your away from the asphalt and possibly enjoy the breeze that might be blowing in?

Imagine what might happen if business’, apartment buildings or any other large scale building added green roofs to their design.  I don’t know the ins and outs of how to make something like this work, but I know it can be done and that it has been done many times.  So why aren’t more business’ looking into this “real estate”?  Luckily some are.

Check out this restaurant in New York http://www.230-fifth.com/rooftop-garden.php

230 Fifth New York

This  restaurant looks amazing and what a great way to add space, character and a little something extra to your business all while helping reduce carbon and cooling the temp around the city.

One of the biggest perks to the roof top garden is how they help cool the city/town around them.  When large surfs are green/living, they absorb the heat and the suns rays before they have a chance to reach the pavement.  Big deal right, well ya it is.  Have you ever wondered why around 4PM on a day when it’s been hot all day long it seems to get a little hotter when it should be cooling off?  Well heat gets trapped in the asphalt of our streets, roofs and in general all of the hard scape that makes up our urban jungles.  Around 4PM the heat is still being released from all this cement making ground level temperatures still feel like it’s noon w/out a tree.  Roof gardens help absorb the heat that normally gets trapped and uses it to help produce oxygen and grow.

For apartment buildings or other buildings without land space roof gardens would give the occupants/employees a place to enjoy fresh air and explore the joys of gardening.  Now I’m sure most companies don’t want their employees spending a lot of time outside tending to a garden when their is work to be done inside, but everyone should have a break and what if you had 30 employees who spent their 15 min break gardening or just spending time outside.  I might be a little nuts, but I would bet that you would end up with happier more productive employees who really take pride in their company, a company that cares and takes pride in their employees.  I know it’s not always practical since a lot of people where suits to work and gardening in a suit sounds awful, but enjoying the garden could be done in a suit.

Alexander Deppert, Wikipedia Greenroofs.com

This building is pretty extreme looking, but the garden on top is pretty amazing. I actually like how the building looks like rock layers and then the garden sits on top.  There are so many different types of roof gardens from this extreme green to the 230 fifth restaurant (photo above) to almost everything in between.

I think the coolest roof garden business I’ve heard of is from a restaurant in Chicago called Uncommon Ground’s you really should check out their website http://www.uncommonground.com/ This restaurant has their own organic garden on top of their restaurant.  They pick the herbs & veggies that they use in their meals daily from their own garden, talk about using space! This is a picture of their raised planter beds on top of the restaurant.  I’ve heard about other more rural restaurants that have gardens in the yard that supply the food for the restaurant, but this is so much more inventive and what a great use of space.  Here is the link to the info about the roof garden on their site http://www.uncommonground.com/pages/green/24.php

The California Academy of Science recently gave themselves a face lift.  With this lift they also gave themselves an amazing green/living roof !  The whole things is amazing.  I’m hoping to spend this Thursday at the museum, I’ll post some pictures!  But you can check them out at http://www.calacademy.org/

here is a picture from the site, it shows a close up picture of the roof.

I love the idea of a green roofs taking over.  Wouldn’t it be amazing if you were flying and looking out the window all you could see would be different shades of blue and green? Imagine how amazing the air quality would be, all these plants sucking up the CO2 and making oxygen all while keeping our houses cool during the summer and warm during the winter.  I really don’t see a negative side at all.  I’m hoping that we will be able to put a new form of green roof on our house, one that our foundation can support.  If we are able to get this project started I will let you all know, ideas to actually getting it started are always hard.

Just a little extra info

http://www.asla.org/meetings/awards/awds02/chicagocityhall.html Chicago City Hall, green roof

http://www.greenroofs.com/projects/

http://www.wbdg.org/resources/greenroofs.php Really interesting site about the science behind roof gardens.

Drawing the Green line

When you think Organic do you automatically think Green?  Or when you think green do you only think organic?  Does organic/green stop at food or do you carry it through your life?  Cleaning products?  I’m a freak about making sure that my cleaning products are not only Eco friendly, but animal friendly as well which means no product that was tested on animals ever makes it into my shopping cart.  I try my best to buy products that use natural oils and disinfectants in them.  One of my favorite cleaning products is actually a combo of edible ingredients, although I wouldn’t eat them together.  I use vinegar, baking soda and fresh lemons as a way of getting all sorts of things clean and fresh.  If my sink is clogged I dump baking soda down the clogged drain and then follow it up with a nice heavy dose of vinegar.  This can be a little funky and messy, but it sure does beat sending down some toxic concoction.  Cleaning cutting boards I first spray a little vinegar on then sprinkle baking soda and last I use half a small lemon, fresh from our tree, to scrub the top and sides of the cutting board.  The result is an amazingly clean cutting board that doesn’t have an odor to it, can’t get cleaner than that.  No plastic cutting boards for us either we use a variety of bamboo cutting boards.

OK this is not about how I clean my house it’s about how we view green/organic and where we draw the line of what’s important.  So what’s important when it comes to the environment and being green?  Is buying Organic food is the only green thing you do? Do you do just what makes you feel better or do you do all that you can do to make things better for everyone?  Also what is best for everyone?  What if everyone in the world gave up cleaning with bleach?  Or what if we stopped using petroleum in our dish soap?  I think one of the easiest changes people can do is switching their dish soaps for a product that doesn’t contain any form of petroleum product or by product.  This would keep millions of gallons of oil from being used in everyday products.  Also is it me or is there something really weird about using oil when cleaning your dishes?  Just a thought.

If you think that making sure you use non-toxic green products to clean, then what about your clothes?  Shoes? How do you feel about buying plastic?  What about when you go to the grocery store, do you bring your own bags?  If not do you get plastic or paper?  What about changing from the plastic bags you put produce in to these neat mesh bags that you can reuse that don’t add weight to your purchase, but are much more Eco friendly?

I would love to hear your thoughts on green living and how much is too much or is that even possible?  Me I’m somewhere in the middle.  I would love to be greener, but it can be a bit more expensive to do the green thing.  For now we focus on the small things.  Making sure that things that come into our house are 1. reusable 2. something we really need 3. as Eco friendly as possible.  I think when you start out on the road to green there are lots of things that sound like a good idea, but being realistic is also important.  Not everyone can make all the changes they want to right away, which is why I would like to hear from you and see what you think is the important steps when greening your life.

My little green gardener

Green gardener in organic brown guitar shirt

The bins are old bins that we found at a garage sale and brought them home to plant in.  Some where old ones that we had but didn’t work for storage because they were getting too old.

Looking forward to hearing from you

Greener AC

This was just a random thought that I had recently about ways to green up our home.  I’m sure others have thought of it, and if that’s the case why hasn’t it started happening.

OK so my thought was why don’t Air conditioning companies go in with solar panel companies and make AC’s that are ready to be run by a solar panel.   It would be a nice little package unit, one AC and one solar panel all wrapped up in a nice tidy Eco friendly package.  If you can buy solar panels to run your electric car, why can’t you run your AC with one?  I don’t mean that you need to outfit your house with solar panels and that you convert your electrical usage to solar, but wouldn’t it be nice if you were able to set up a single solar panel that was strictly there to power your AC!?  It could store up energy throughout the year and during the summer months it would keep your AC humming with less guilt for using it.

I personally don’t have an AC system in my house, but if something like this came out I would really have to come up a reason Not to buy one.  Rarely do we need AC where I live, but there are days when I spend a little extra time at work to enjoy the cool air.

Just a little random thought for the day.  Till next time stay cool as the summer kicks into full gear!

Off the Grid update

This is an update from a previous post in which I began discussing what it takes to go off of the grid and how we were taking steps to remove ourselves in a realistic timeline. One of our biggest hurdles has been the costs, even though there can be great savings in going green it still requires initial costs.  Anyway that’s a whole different post.  We have been talking about things that we can do that will help cut back on our energy bill.  We live in a really old, hodgepodge style house and don’t have AC, there are so many cracks in the house we’d just cool the outside, but we still use fans and an attic fan.

Our plan… We’ve decided that one of the simplest things for us to do right now is put in well placed, drought tolerant, fast growing trees and vines that will grow and shade our home.  We have a huge tree in our front yard that has been providing great shade which keeps our house really cool until the sun slips into the west and starts frying the back of our house, and I do mean frying.  Some days it gets so hot in the back portions of our house that we have to leave the house all together.

Action…We strategically placed a few new trees and vines around the house. The new trees and vines that we have planted are already doing great in terms of adding size, but it will be another year or so until they are at a height that we will see useful. These same plants will also shed their leaves during the winter and allow sunlight to reach the house and keep down heating costs.

I know this doesn’t seem like much but putting in plants that help protect your house from the sun can reduce the amount of time that your AC is on or reduce the amount of energy that you use for your fans and other cooling devices.  We are hoping that this will help us cut back on the amount of energy we are using.  I’ll keep you posted and let you know if we see a reduction in energy costs, granted it probably won’t be until next summer.

Greening one step at a time.

A Healthy Green Start

If you haven’t heard about Greensburg, Kansas now is the time to take a look at this amazing little town.  I was watching a green building show when Greensburg was brought up.  The show went into a few details about how this little town was going green and why.

In May of 2007 the entire town of Greensburg Kansas was destroyed by an F-5 Class tornado.  When the dust had cleared the town got together to figure out the best way to rebuild their community and their homes.  This amazing little town has decided to go all sustainable and green in their rebuilding.  The construction that they are working with is sustainable as well as being stronger than before.

If you have a chance I highly recommend going to http://www.greensburgks.org/.  This is the website for the town and it has many details about how the town is actually making the buildings green. I have never been to Greensburg, but I found the whole idea of taking something so tragic and turning it into a whole new healthy start inspiring!  I hope you do too.

I hope someday soon it won’t take a tragic natural disaster for all of our towns to be GREEN!!!

Kiddie Green Garden

Do you ever feel like the only things you can do with your kid end up costing you at least a hundred dollars for  a few hours of entertainment and that’s just if they are little kids.  Don’t get me wrong I love going to the park and watching my little on run around and climb and swing, but face it after 30 minutes I’m ready for something else.

Yesterday my daughter asked to go to the park.  I was not really thrilled with the idea of the park.  I made the suggestion that we go look at flowers, for boys you might try bugs, she was beyond excited.  We unpacked the car of all the normal junk that’s in the back stroller, backpack, 800 different balls, clothes etc and headed to our local nursery.  This is the best part our local nursery is a mom & pop style place with real landscape mixed in with the buy-able plants.  We spent well over an hour walking through the plants looking at flowers talking about the birds and counting things, anything didn’t really matter what it was.  When we were ready to leave the fun wasn’t over we had spent a whopping $35.00, less than an adult ticket to most places, on plants to bring home with us.

By the time we got home I thought my daughter would have lost interest, not a chance.  She couldn’t wait to get outside with her “tools” and help.  We spent another two hours planning where the plants would go and being very careful to watch for bugs and other plants.  Here’s my point for $35.00 and a few bucks in gas my family spent about 5 hours exploring, planting and learning about our local wildlife.  The best part is our money went to something that will produce oxygen and make our yard beautiful for years to come.  For all you parents out there who feel you are running out of ideas.  Give your local nursery a try, who knows what you’ll come home with and there’s no admittance fee.

Where Does My Food Come From?

Kids are great at asking questions and here’s a question that could involve a fun family outing to learn the answer too.  I live in the San Francisco bay area and every Sunday rain or shine we have a local farmers market.  Farmers from all over central and northern California come to several locations to sell their produce, meats, goods and flowers.  We are fortunate enough to have a lot of organic farmers at our local farmers market with great produce and budget friendly prices.  

The farmers market is a great Eco friendly alternative to grocery stores.  By buying produce that is local we are helping to cut down the amount of CO2 that is put into the atmosphere by trucking food in from other states or countries.  Farmers markets also help to support our local farmers and stimulate our local economy.  Not only that the farmers market is fun.

Going to the farmers market is one of my favorite family activities.  My 2 year old loves to help pick out all her favorite fruits and veggies.  She likes to ask the farmers questions about what fruits or veggie she doesn’t recognize and the majority of the farmers are eager and happy to answer her questions.  After our visit to the market we usually take great finds and head to the local park for a picnic, after washing everything of course.

Happy Picking

Doin the dishes

If there is one house hold chore I hate it’s doing dishes.  I don’t know why, I hate loading dishes into the dishwasher, I hate pre-washing, I even loath putting them away!  Alternatives, none that really seem healthy, I don’t think anyone would like it if I  let the dogs clean the dishes,  so I am forced to clean them the sanitary way.   If you have a non-disgusting way of doing the dishes w/out just throwing them out please let me know!!  Until then I will continue to do the dishes the way I always have.

One of the things that was ingrained in my head as a child growing up in California is conserve water.  So nothing freaks me out more than watching people doing dishes with the water running.  Of course there is always going to be a need for some running water, but it doesn’t need to be on while your scrubbing or even to rinse off all the dishes.  Here’s how dishes are washed in our house, not to say it’s the best way but it might get you thinking of a different way of doing your own dishes.  It might also save you a little money each month!

I fill, a little over half way, the largest pot or bowl that I am washing with soapy hot water.  I dump all the forks, knives and spoons into the bottom to soak.  Then I use the pot to soak the small plates and cups in, if needed.   If soaking is not required I just use the pot to wet my scrub brush and start pre-washing.  I really don’t rinse them off since they are going straight into the dishwasher.  Once everything is put into the dishwasher they are pretty clean already, but I like to run them through the dishwasher to get them really clean and sanitised.  Since they are already cleaned I usually run the dishes on a quick wash; this is about half the time of a normal wash and almost and hour off of the power wash on our dishwasher.

 Doing the dishes this way saves us a decent amount of water as well as a good amount of energy from our shorter wash cycle, which of course saves money.  The added bonus is that it’s helping to preserve our natural resources.

 What are your great ideas on ways to save water, energy and of course MONEY?

Dishes are done!!