CT Green Scene

S.A.L.T. at Connecticut College This Saturday

by Eileen Weber

Are you looking for something to do this Saturday? The Connecticut College Arboretum has something for you. They are hosting a seminar called S.A.L.T., or Smaller American Lawns Today.

Many homeowners have an acre of land or more to tend regularly, and that's the problem. Want to mow it? Then break out your John Deere and emit all those fossil fuels. How do you keep it green? Bust out those chemicals, like fertilizers and pesticides, and you’ve just contributed to contaminated run-off. So what’s a homeowner to do?

According to Kathy Dame, Assistant Director at the Arboretum, there are alternatives. She said planting a garden or letting a portion of your lawn become a meadow can help. Planting evergreen ground covers or mosses, especially on slopes that are hard to mow, also work well. Many people choose to plant a border of perennials, which can make your lawn seem surprisingly larger than it is.

When you plan your lawn in such a manner, you can get some surprising results. “What happens is you get biodiversity,” said Dame. “It’s amazing the little creatures that come. You can’t find a grasshopper in a finely manicured lawn.” 

Organic Turf Care Workshop November 20th

What's In Season CT?

by Megan DiPerri

Had any cherries or strawberries lately? Bet they don't taste half as good as they did over the summer.  Chances are you didn't grab a bad bunch at the grocery store; they're just not in season.  Knowing which fruits and vegetables are in season will reduce future disappointment and actually start saving you some money.  Best of all, seasonal produce is much more nutritional because it requires less chemicals, pesticides to produce.  They also offer one more way to support the local economy.  Who knew buying in season would taste that good!

The Connecticuit Department of Agriculture has this fantastic guide that takes all the guess work out of knowing what to buy and most importantly, when.  Next up?  Apples, cauliflower, eggplant, lettuce, greens, pears, potatoes, herbs, carrots...the list goes on.  Just because we live in New England doesn't mean we're short on variety! Local farmers markets and pick your own facilities also take the guess work out of buying seasonal produce.  Ok, I agree, most of us aren't going to go pick our own fruits and vegetables once the snow comes, but that's where knowing what to buy from your local grocer comes in handy.

Spending extended time somewhere else?  The USDA offers an extensive list of local farmers markets and Field to Plate has plenty of links to help you find out what's in season and when across the entire country.  How great is that?

Don't Let Those Pumpkins Go To Waste!

by Kate L. Harrison

Happy Halloween CT!  To celebrate the holiday I thought I would modify a short entry I put together for GetMarried.com.  Even if you are not planning a wedding, these ideas are a fun and elegant use of pumpkins & gourds:

When you think about pumpkins you may not immediately think "eco-chic decor."  However, pumpkins are seasonal, plentiful, reusable/compostable and can be quite festive.  Here are five ways to use incorporate pumpkins into any fall celebration. 

1. Instead of carving creepy faces, cut geometric patterns into pumpkins to create luminous lanterns.  

 

2. Carve out a large pumpkin and use it as a cooler.

Images above: Martha Stewart Living

 

3. Place small pumpkins and colorful gourds in the center of your tables.  Guests can take them home after the meal and enjoy them for weeks.

Image:Angelique Events

 

4. Use miniature pumpkins/gourds o hold seating cards.  These can also double as favors. 

Image: Kaboodle

 

5. Say good-bye with pumpkin style. 

Image:Evite Blog

CT RESOURCES:

Still looking for a pumpkin?  Click here to find one at a local CT farm. 

Not sure about what to do with all of those pumpkin innards?  Check out some of the delicious pumpkin and pumpkin seed recipes at Epicurious!  

To learn more about composting in CT click here.

The Greener Halloween

by Eileen Weber

Halloween. It kick-starts the holidays, doesn’t it? From here, it’s a straight shot to New Year’s Day with its ubiquitous hangover and ensuing Christmas bills.

But Halloween also starts the sweet treat feeding frenzy that the holidays bring every year. Gobs of candy in pumpkin-sized buckets that kids plow through in less than a week. One organization is looking to fight that by offering healthier alternatives.

Green Halloween, a non-profit organization based in Seattle with a local branch in Canton, Conn., seeks to promote healthy families and, subsequently, healthy communities by preventing childhood obesity.

But what’s one day out of the year? Why not live a little? “The problem is it's not just one day,” said Corey Colwell-Lipson, founder of the Seattle-based company. According to a press release on their web site earlier this month, Colwell-Lipson said it wouldn’t be so bad if it were just one day out of the year. But, it’s all the special occasions we celebrate in which our choices make a difference.

“In reality, we are constantly celebrating,” she said. “Whether it's the biggies like Christmas, Easter or Thanksgiving or the myriad individual celebrations that clog our calendars—birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, baby showers, office parties, family reunions, religious and ethnic holidays…We're not asking people to give up the fun of celebrating, only to consider the impact our traditional approaches might have and consider the alternatives.”

Two Angry Moms Screening

Event : Westport Screening of Two Angry Moms
Westport Chef and Educator Nicole Straight is hosting a screening of Two Angry Moms at the Westport Library on Tuesday, October 28th.

Part exposé, part "how-to", filmmaker Amy Kalafa chronicles the efforts of local activist and founder of Better School Food, Susan Rubin, and other leaders in the fledgling better school food movement as they take on the system nationwide. From Chefs Alice Waters and Ann Cooper reinventing school food in Berkeley California to Chef Tony Geraci's student designed meals in New Hampshire, Amy discovers programs that connect the cafeteria with the classroom and connect our kids with the earth. Over the course of a school year, we see Susan's coalition drive dramatic changes in one Westchester, NY school district. 

Two Angry Moms shows not only on what is wrong with school food; it offers strategies for overcoming roadblocks and getting healthy, good tasting, real food into school cafeterias. The movie explores the roles the federal government, corporate interests, school administration and parents play in feeding our country's school kids. 

See what happens when fed-up moms start a grass-roots revolution!

where : Westport Public Library, McManus Room
when : Tuesday, October 28, 9:30 - 11:30am
Free to the public, a panel discussion will follow the screening

For more details about the movie and the movement please visit angrymoms.org, or contact Nicole J. Straight at: 203-221-8306

The next screening in Connecticut will be in Wilton on January 21st. Visit their web site for more details.
 
For more information on what Connecticut schools are doing to be green, click on this link.

How Green Is Your College?

Wondering how green your college is? Check out these sites to see how your current school or alma mater is stacking up and then get on board to help them to do better!

• Sustainable Endowment Institute's "College Sustainability Report Card 2008"
• Princeton Review's "Green Rating Honor Roll"
• Kaplan College Guide's list of 25 green colleges
• Sierra Club's list of 10 "Cool Schools" taking action on climate change (and five schools that get failing grades)
• "Beyond Grey Pinstripes" [PDF], a report that ranks MBA programs on how well they integrate social and environmental issues

Recycle Plastic Bottle Caps

by Megan DiPerri

Don't throw out those pesky plastic bottle caps, recycle them.  I know it's not as easy as recycling the container itself but plastic bottle caps don't belong in the garbage.  Caps don't break down and actually pose a significant threat to our wildlife.  The plastic caps make their way into landfills and waterways and are often mistaken for food by many animals. It's time we start resisting the urge to just toss plastic bottle caps out.  There are alternative and they aren't as difficult as you may think.

If your community doesn't require or even offer recycling options for plastic bottle caps, you're not completely out of luck.  A great resource I stumbled upon is a website called Earth911.  From this website you can search recycling options for just about anything, even plastic bottle caps!  You're likely to find a center that is somewhere along your daily commute.  If there isn't one, there are still options I promise.  Check with local schools and charities as they often team up with larger corporations for different recycling initiatives.

One very strong recycling initiative has been made by Aveda.  They recently kicked off a powerful grass-root effort to recycle plastic bottle caps at New York Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2009 called Recycle Caps With Aveda.  Finding that a majority of caps today are not recycled, their vast network of salons and stores has teamed up with schools, charities and local consumers to launch this new recycling program.  In a nutshell, here's how it works.  Aveda collects plastic bottle caps at their stores and participating schools and sends the caps to their own recycler.  From there the caps are transformed into new caps and containers.  How fantastic is that?

Before you toss out that plastic bottle cap remember, they can be recycled.  This is one pollution problem we need to put a lid on!

Baby Greens

by Eileen Weber

Every mom wants what’s best for her baby. So why not have all natural, environmentally friendly products for your little one? There are a number of them out there that promote lotions, shampoos, and even boo-boo cream.

Linda Zielski, Founder and Chief Visionary Officer of Seaside Naturals in Branford, found it important to include baby products with the rest of her all natural line.

She and her husband David bought the Simple.Pure.Clean. cleaning service in 2003. About a year or two later, they had launched a Simple.Pure.Baby. line of all natural ingredients with essential oils infused with herbs.

One product that has been very popular is her diaper cream. She said that one customer told her that her newborn had been on antibiotics and had gotten a horrible rash as a result. After one application, the baby’s rash had disappeared. “They’re really effective,” she said. “I’m really proud to say that.”

Besides the slew of all natural products available on the market, a bigger issue looms on your baby’s bottom: diapers. Many parents turn to organic cotton cloth diapers. But those parents also deal with the hassle of cleaning them or using a service. And, the cloth ones are often less convenient than a disposable.

That’s where the eco-diapers come in. There are a few companies that have championed the biodegradable diaper that do not contain harmful chemicals.

eWaste

by Eileen Weber

What do you do with your old computer, cell phone or clock radio? Most people don’t know. It’s not like you can just throw that kind of stuff in the blue recycling bin on garbage night and hope for the best.

But many computers and other electronics end up in landfills wedged between last night’s take-out and an old couch cushion. Environmentally speaking, that’s a tiny nightmare. Hazardous materials like lead and mercury can seep into the ground. Eventually, this ends up as run-off in our waterways. Not exactly ideal.

More recently, eBay has become the pseudo-garbage disposal. Make a couple hundred bucks on last year’s laptop and let some other poor slob worry about it. But whether it’s you or the poor slob you sold it to, that computer will have to be thrown out sooner or later.

That’s where The Computer Recycler comes in. Located in Cromwell, they will take your computer trash—or eWaste—and recycle it.

The company started out as a computer repair service. But gradually, more and more clients left their old computers in favor of buying a new one that was relatively inexpensive. That left Cianci with unclaimed computer equipment and no place to put it. “I kept thinking, ‘How can I reuse this?’” he said. “Then a light bulb went off.”