CT Green Scene

Natural Pesticides that Work

EarthTalkTM
From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: What green-friendly lawn and garden pesticides are available today? I’m particularly interested in options that won’t harm my cats.     -- Nancy Blanchard, via e-mail

Pesticides have greatly boosted agricultural yields over the last half century, so it is no wonder, given the commercial availability of many of these synthetic chemicals, that American homeowners apply 100 million pounds of the stuff each year to make their own gardens grow bigger and faster, too.

But the downside of using such chemicals is that they can poison people and pets as well as backyard wildlife: “Common insecticide ingredients such as 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D), atrazine and dicamba have been shown to harm mouse embryos at times equivalent to the first week after conception in humans,” says Erica Glasener of The Green Guide. Due to such revelations, home gardeners are fast discovering the benefits of avoiding chemicals in favor of natural, less toxic alternatives.

But before thinking about applying pesticides, gardeners can design (or re-design) their gardens to make the most of native plants that have evolved over eons to thrive in local conditions without synthetic aid or lots of water. Choosing native plants appropriate to your elevation, soil type, drainage and sun exposure will naturally repel many common pests and also reduce the propagation of invasive exotic species.

Similarly, embedding your plants in healthy soil replete with beneficial insects and worms can also help reduce the need for pesticides. Laura Moran of Mainstreet.com suggests that home gardeners compost their vegetable food waste—which is chock full of nutrients that plants love—and mix it into existing soil to give the garden a healthy boost. “Aside from stimulating healthy root development,” she writes, “the addition of rich compost also improves soil texture, aeration and water retention.” It also provides a nice home, she says, for the beneficial bugs that are destroyed along with the bad ones by chemical pesticides.

If pesticides are necessary, there are a handful of organic varieties available. Bacillus thuringiensis (“Bt”) is a naturally occurring bacterium that is lethal to most leaf-eating caterpillars on trees, shrubs, flowers and vegetables. According to gardening writer Jeff Ball, it is harmless to all other insects, animals and humans. It comes in a powder form for use as a dust, or, when diluted with water, as a spray. Organic chemists have formulated varieties of Bt to kill mosquitoes or potato beetles as well.

Biodegradable Dog Poop Bags

On What to with A Handful of Dog Poo

by Elizabeth Howard

After we got finished discussing wine, films, Sex and the City, Myanmar and the general state of the weather at our cozy Southport luncheon, we finally got around to chatting about poo.

It started innocently enough, with a conversation about weaning ourselves off of plastic grocery bags. 

It evolved from the full-fledged bags to finding a replacement for the produce bags, which I had recently found a solution for.

"But then, you know," Carol asked, "what do you do about picking up the dog poop?" Carol is nothing if not practical. And she has a Black Lab.

Not to worry: when we aren't slathering butter on a cob, or pumping it into our gas tank, corn apparently has another brilliant use: biodegradable dog poop bags!

NOTE: The instructions on this product say you can toss the pet waste in the compost heap. DON'T!! Pet feces should not be mixed with normal garden compost that may come in contact with food. For a better alternative, check out Sharon Slack's Pet Waste Composter.

How Green can St. Patrick’s Day Be??

By Kia Martinson-Wenzel

www.ESTOccasions.com

You won’t need the help of wee little leprechauns to make your St. Patrick’s Day celebration green in all sense of the word. Just a little clever planning and effort will lead to a successful green event.

First off, comes the invitations to your green party. Online sites like www.evite.com and www.zoji.com allow to send and keep track of your guest list. Do something clever and have everyone bring a green article of clothing that can be donated to the Salvation Army. This is a great way to get a head start on spring cleaning and to help out others.

Visit your local nursery and purchase a full sheet of clovers in mini biodegradable planters. Fill one of your trays at home with them and place them in the middle of your party table as the centerpiece. Best thing is, that at the end of the party, let your friends take some home with them to plant. So with one stop you have taken care of your centerpiece and favors.

Serve www.Steaz.com sparkling green tea soda. Their use of the best tea leaves and organic sugar cane gives the product an amazing taste. Now there are more flavors than just green tea to try. Local Whole Foods, Wild Oats, Trader Joes and other health stores do carry them. Finding a great organic beer is getting easier for all of your beer lovers. In Portland Maine, Peak Organic Beer brews three different types of beer. All of their barley and hops are grown without toxics or pesticides. www.Peakbrewing.com Serve these all in your biodegradable plastic cups. The Fabrikal cups are made agricultural crops, like potatoes and corn. They are reusable but the amazing thing is that they can be placed in your compost pile and they will biodegrade. Order them at www.greenearthofficesupply.stores.yahoo.net

Start your party off with a chilled cantaloupe melon soup. This can be made in a day or two before the party. Serve them in shot glasses as a starter or a passed appetizer. For added cuteness place them in the clover tray and give the centerpiece an extra duty. A simple Kiwi and green grape salad is a refreshing treat. While it can be hard to locate great food that is green in color, just remember to keep it green in the other sense.

If there is going to be children at the party, have them all bring two old coffee cans and have them make their own Lime ice cream. This is a great way to show them how to recycle a common household item and it is fun. http://crafts.kaboose.com/coffee-can-ice-cream.html

Last of all, for all the parents who send in treats for the St. Patty’s Day parties at school, this year send in a packet of seeds for each child. Have your own child pick out their favorite green veggies and give peas, cucumbers and lettuce packets. We can all hope the children will be interested in growing and making their yard a little greener this spring.

         

Cost Effective and Earth-friendly Landscaping

EARTH TALK
From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: Is it possible to landscape my property in a green-friendly way? I would like to create a more natural and wildlife-friendly backyard, but I don’t want to break the bank doing it. Are there any tax incentives for completing such projects?     -- Michal Avraham, Olive Branch, MS

One common misperception about adopting green practices around the home is that doing so will cost more money. But this may be true only in the short run. There are certainly some up-front outlays to converting a conventional backyard into a more environmentally friendly space (like any landscaping job), but homeowners should be able to make their money back within a few years through savings on their water and yard service bills alone.

Landscapes designed with the principles of nature and wildlife habitat in mind are often referred to as
“ naturescapes” (or “xeriscapes” when they also require little water to maintain). They usually replace most lawn grass and instead populate space with native plants that are attractive to wildlife for food or shelter.

According to the nonprofit PlantNative, maintaining a green backyard can cost up to 90 percent less than keeping up a traditional lawn-based landscape. “Since naturescapes effectively take care of themselves, there is little or no maintenance and hence little or no maintenance cost,” says the group. The average American lawn costs about $700 yearly to maintain, says PlantNative, which also points out that the average household lawnmower is used upwards of 40 hours a year, the equivalent of a full work week.

Good Tea, Very Good Tea

In this month's issue of Natural Awakenings, there is a simple, direct article reminding us why we should pass on the skinny caramel latte double foam and go straight for tea-- especially green tea.

You have never had to convince me about the virtues of a leafy warm beverage-- for some reason, even though my Mom was always a Folgers drinker, I followed my Dad's preference of hot Liptons in the evening. It wasn't the health qualities tea brings with it after steeping, but the mere warm-y goodness of it.  Drinking tea, even at my desk on a busy afternoon, opens for me whole moments of pause, time to just sip and commune with my thoughts.

Tea, in some way, has a direct line from my lips to the slower part of my brain, it seems. No matter how much I love to indulge in cup of sweetened-cream Dunkin D's coffee (a poor substitute for Tim Hortons I might add), I still consider myself, truly a tea drinker.

If you are wondering what I buy in the tea aisle, it has recently come down to two brands: Numi and Yogi. Recently I decided to fully commit to organic teas, and I go back and forth between Yogi and Numi. Yogi Tea, made in Eugene, Ore., has a mad variety, but they are not entirely organic. Still I am charmed by their recent re-branding, especially the thoughtful teabag-tag and yoga-on-the-box advice.

Numi, out of Oakland, Calif., is a bit more serious, intense and rich, slightly more expensive (not by much) with a wilder undercurrent. When I hold a box of Numi in my hand, it feels like a commitment-- a very good one.

So, if you happen by the Wild Harvest aisle of Shaw's and spot of woman standing, gazing lovingly at the shelves of tea, say hi. I'm often there, visiting the boxes, seeing what is new, trying to resist.

Linen and Towels - The Perfect Green Solution

Or... Use What You've Got

by Elizabeth Howard

In offering green tips, I work generally on the principle that other people, like me, are imperfect and not immune to temptation.

As for me, I have a problem with the lure of lush bath towels and crisp new sheets.

By way of confession, at right I have posted a photo of my linen closet. Note that it is perfectly well stocked (though not perfectly folded) with towels, hand towels and face cloths. The sheets--indicating various stages of taste, husband's bachelorhood, duvet shades and mattress sizes-- are nonetheless, intact and well-stocked.

So, what's the tip? For most of us, by now it should be obvious, though I will be the first to admit, actually living this tip isn't easy.

It's worth repeating though, and I will because REUSE is my favorite R: Use what you've got!

Die, Old Habit!

Stopping ourselves from making purchases, for the sake adorning or updating our homes (or ourselves, not to mention those bothersome children and pets, OY!) isn't easy. I mean to tell you, it is downright a pain in the donkey.

So here's something to puzzle yourself with when you are, like me, wandering around Crackville (aka Target), goggling at the pretty-pretty, matchy-matchy blue margarita glasses and serving platters.

"How many towels does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent light bulb?"

Existential? Sure. But then, it's all a personal matter of how you face the crisis: just push your Target trolley through it.

Join the Yogurt Brigade!

It appears my plea for finding a use for yogurt cups was heard... once again by the innovative folks TerraCycle.

In conjunction with Stonyfield Farm, TerraCycle's Yogurt Brigade is collecting 6 and 32 oz yogurt containers from the Northeast part of the country and arranging to have them reused as disposal planting pots! Brilliant! You can get rid of all those pesky, lidless yogurt cups!

The second brilliant part of TerraCycle's scheme? For every pot you send, they'll donate 2 or 5 cents (more for the biggies!) to a charity of your choice! You just need the Tax ID number!

There are certain guidelines for the Yogurt Brigade so be sure to read their FAQs before signing up.  For any questions, send an email to info@terracycle.net or call 609-393-4252 x 36.

Be sure to read about TerraCycle's other brilliant brigades for Drink Pouches and Plastic Bottles.
 

De-commercializing the Holidays... A Swap

by Elizabeth Howard

Every year, earlier and earlier, the decorations come up at the stores. Ugh.

This year, on Halloween day at Target, I overheard one morose father contemplate giving out candy canes for Trick or Treat: the sales associates were stripping down the Halloween merchandise before the holiday had even started. Why? To make way for the lighted trees and green and gold wrapped Hershey's Kisses.

That's why I LOVE this article "12 Ways to Decommercialize Christmas" by Megan Kamerick, posted on Bankrate.com. She offers a slew of ways to take it all DOWN a notch. Number one on the list is my favorite, a "Yankee Swap" or what my Canadian family calls a "Chinese Gift Exhcange." Called by many other weird names-- White Elephant, Thieving Elves, and my personal favorite, Dirty Santa-- it's a gift exchange for adults: one gift each, a price limit, a certain amount of creativity and theft! How can you go wrong?

Just Beat It

One of the hardest things to deal with at this time of year is the pressures, most significantly, I believe,  the pressure of competition. For example, one woman ahead of me in line at Christmas Tree Shops was spending $300 on wrapping paper, stockings, their stuffers, and dozens of other throw-away pieces of junk. What for? A school Christmas party. At what point does (or has?) the "holiday spirit" become infected with something else entirely?

At the holidays, I feel there seems to be a sense that because we have the means, we need to somehow-- if not each other-- at the very least outdo ourselves. A better and bigger gift, party, tree than last year.

The decision to embrace a greener, more holistic lifestyle definitely means fighting all sorts of demons. And for American consumers at the holidays, the meanest demon of all is that one inside, something like "competitive goodness," which, if you are looking for it, often disguises itself as "giving."

Freecycle Connecticut

by Elizabeth Howard

Recently my husband and I acquired a Connecticut-sized house and suddenly it occured to me that I needed stuff. Not just the decorative, make-it-your-own stuff, but basic, don't-want-to-look-like-a-squatter stuff: a rake, a lawn mower, bookshelves, lamps. Where we lived before, we had much less space, and no grass.

So there I was, wandering in Home Depot, depressed. I couldn't bring myself to buy that plastic rake and that shiny shovel. I mean, there is something wrong about buying a clean hoe. You just know the next day you'll turn the corner and spot "10 for $10" sign on a pile of rusty, dirty, perfectly good garden tools at a tag sale.

Letting the weeds grow and the garden fester, I researched. Craigslist was good. But Freecycle one upped it.

So what exactly is Freecycle?

The Freecycle Network is a web of individual groups across the globe. It's a grassroots and nonprofit movement of people who are giving away and getting stuff for free in their own towns. Currently, there are about 4100 local groups and almost 4 million members in the world. Groups are moderated by local volunteers. In the U.S. these groups are run through Yahoo Groups. Membership is free.

How do I join?

In Connecticut there are currently 34 Freecycle groups, including groups for New Haven, Stamford/Greenwich, Litchfield area, Torrington, Bridgeport area, Hartford, Shelton/Oxford area and many others. The Freecycle website makes it simple to find the groups nearest you, and you are welcome to join more than one. However, some groups may ask for a zip code to verify the area you live in. This is to limit the groups to the local areas and to prevent spammers on the web groups.

Growing Green Businesses

More and more people are bringing their awareness of green living to their place of business. From large corporations like Walmart to small businesses like my neighborhood printer--a growing number of businesses are becoming more environmentally responsible.

According to an April 2007 Gallup survey, 47% of small business owners are taking steps to being more environmentally responsible. They're learning that eco-conscious choices not only help the planet and the people on it, but boost their bottom line as well. Lower maintenance and operating costs, and a growing market share of consumers who are supporting green business make environmentally sound business a wise choice. What's more, grants like those available from the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund can refund up to half the cost of installing solar panels, which quickly decreases utility costs.

Want to learn more about recycling in your office?  Check out these resources.

Recycling: www.earth911.org (general office), www.eiae.org (electronics), www.dell.com/recycling, www.apple.comenvironment/recycling/program, www.hp.com/recycle (computers), www.greendisk.com (computer disks, CDs), www.rbrc.org/call2recycle (batteries and cell phones), www.lamprecycle.org (fluorescent lamps and bulbs (containing mercury), www.carpetrecovery.org, www.antron.net (carpet).

Source: Priority Magazine, September/October 2007