christmas already?!

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vinegar and baking soda

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ecological surfing

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blog action day! hanging out the laundry

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coca-soap

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bottle houses

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compost and mulch

apparently, i'm not the only ecological preacher out there! the beach we went to in colombia this past summer was full of trees with inspirational messages on them. i got such a kick out of them! here it says "la idea no es limpiar mas, si no ensuciar menos," or rather "the idea isn't to clean more, but to dirty less."

this tree is saying "si me quieres no me ensucies," so "if you care about me, don't dirty me." cool, huh?!

so, here i'm writing about two idea to "dirty less." first, compost. some italian towns collect "wet" trash separately, meaning organic trash, meat and grease remains, paper napkins, etc. unfortunately they don't compost this stuff (at least not in my town), even though they couldn't really with the animal byproducts in it, but they dispose of it in some way that isn't dumping it in a landfill or bringing it to our despised local incinerator. i need to find out more about it, i honestly don't know exactly what they do with it. anyway, even doing this, it's still trash that needs to be gotten rid of. so i decided to start composting.

if you have a yard, it's super easy to pop a compost pile or bin in the corner and dump all your fruit and veggie remains, egg shells and paper napkins in it. after a while, the heat helps decompose it and after quite a few months (or years) you'll have marvelous soil, full of nutrients, that you can put back in your garden or use for potting plants. some italian towns even give out free composters to those who have a yard to use it in.

those who live in an apartment will have a bit more difficulty using a compost bin, and that's why i didn't use one myself. but then a friend of mine managed to do balcony compost, so i gave it a go as well. so, procure a bucket and a plastic bag that fits in it nicely and is wide enough to fold over the rim of the bucket (so it won't slide down or move). use something pointy (i used an ice pick) to make a bunch of holes in the bag, then put it in the bucket. first put dry twigs at the bottom. the twigs and holes let air to circulate a bit, otherwise you'll end up with some yucky, stinky mush. then you can start dumping your stuff in it. it's important to remember NOT to put any animal products in your compost (except egg shells)! put the bucket on your balcony, preferably in the shade and where the rain won't get it. leave it uncovered when possible, but if it might rain, cover it. the contents should stay dampish, but not too much. it's better if you mix it every so often and you'll see how it starts decomposing. don't worry, it won't stink if you don't let it get wet. if possible, mix in a couple of tablespoons of fireplace ashes every couple of months. it's amazing to see how so much trash can become so little soil and how much less trash you'll have. in about 6 months you'll already start to be able to use some of your awesome new soil for you balcony plants!

i grew up in a town on the atlantic ocean and it's common to take frequent walks to the beach. in our area the beaches are full of dry seaweed. my mother brings home masses of this seaweed and spreads in among her garden plants as mulch/fertilizer. it works really well, is cool-looking, is super ecological, gives the soil lots of nutrients, and is free! go mom!

so, there are another couple of ideas of how to dirty less, enriching your soil, all for free!

blog action day 2009: climate change

October 15 is Blog Action Day, a day in which all registered blogs write about a specific topic as it relates to their blog's topic. This year the topic is "climate change," something that I consider pretty darn important, so I registered right away. The idea is that if everyone writes on this topic at a specific time, readers can't help but read about the environment and climate change, and it's really important that everyone is well-informed not only about the environmental crisis, but also about what they can do to help out.

So I ask everyone with a blog to think about registering-- it only takes a minute!

international day without plastic bags

Anyone who knows me even a bit knows that one thing I hate are plastic bags. If a person reuses them, for example to make a lamp, that's great, but we all know that way too many plastic bags get loose, harming the environment and animals. Last month we spent a week in Taganga, on the Caribbean Sea in Colombia, while they were doing some public construction work on the streets. Digging holes near the shore they uncovered a layer of trash, mostly plastic bags, squashed between layers of soil that have built up over the years. All this plastic was pretty far down, not at all at the surface, so we can surmise that it had been there for quite a few years, but it hadn't decomposed even a bit. It was just a bit ripped up.

I read in the Italian newspaper la Repubblica that the 12th of September will be the first international day without plastic bags, meaning consumers should refrain from accepting stores' plastic bags, using instead washable bags or already used bags. Hoping that people realize that it's not at all difficult and they continue to do so. Let's keep our fingers crossed!

Guess what else I found in those holes in the street in Colombia? A flip-flop, like new despite all those years it had been buried. Poor little guy...if only he could've had a happier ending....

paper or plastic?

I recently read an article on change.org about what type of bag you should choose at the supermarket. The author, however, write that it isn't as important what type of bag you use as what's INSIDE the bag. Condiser a bag full of meat, potatoes, tropical fruit and soda and another bag with a vegetarian diet with soy protein and produce coming from your country. It takes 113 MJ (megajoules) to get that first bag of groceries on the dinner table and 24 MJ for the second. On the other hand, it only takes 0.5 MJ to produce and dispose of a plastic bag. Therefore the energy saved by a family of four eating a diet from that second bag of groceries would be enough to manufacture 186 plastic bags or drive the average American car (meaning: big) for 15 miles (24 km). And all this backs up what I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the harm eating meat does.

Ok, so even if we just buy dry beans and local fruit and veggies, we still have the plastic vs. paper dilemma. It seems (according to that article) that it takes 20 times the amount of energy to produce a paper bag than a plastic one. But you can easily recycle paper bags while plastic ones take centuries to decompose, they're dangerous for wild animals and they create other problems, like blocking public drains. And so there's no doubt about it that reusable/washable bags win hands down.

There are all sorts of possibilities for reusable shopping bags: cloth ones, juta ones, more resistent plastic ones, etc. In the United States reusable bags are relatively popular, but Italy (or at least southern Italy) hasn't quite caught on yet. Sometimes I actually have to argue with shopkeepers or cashiers because they insist I use their plastic bag. I could understand slightly if they had a bag with their logo to give them advertising, but generally they're just anonymous plastic bags.

One problem I often run into is when I decide to buy something when I'm already out and about, without my collection of washable bags. Those who usually move around by car can just keep their reusable bags in their car, but it's a bit harder for people on foot to bring around a bunch of cloth bags. Last year I was given a very nice gift, the ChicoBag. It's a bag made from 7 recycled plastic bottles, is super light, and gets closed up inside a little pocket sewn on the inside to bring it around. You can't use it for really heavy things (I had to resew some of the seams after I put too much weight in it once), but it's really convenient to carry around in your bag all the time for when you make a spur of the moment purchase.

Those bigger plastic shopping bags are easy to reuse in other ways, like for your trash or to carry around other stuff. But my main problem were those smaller produce bags. They get dirty, and so are hard to recycle, and they're too small to really reuse for many things. And just look at all that plastic used to bag up a single cucumber! Ridiculous! Then I saw some produce bags made of organza or nylon mesh on the founder of the website Cloth Pad Shop (where I sell cloth pads and other things)'s personal website. It seemed like a great idea, so I copied it. I got some nylon mesh and added a drawstring recycled from the same pyjama pants I made my potholders from. Next time I'll use some lighter (and prettier) ribbon or something for a drawstring. They looked at me kind of funny when I asked to use these bags at the supermarket (though I'm used to this, being a "weird" foreigner who always does things "differently" than everyone else!) but they didn't have any problems with them. And just look how pretty groceries are with these bags!


There are, however, people who put plastic bags to good use. For example, there is a seller on etsy (which unfortunately is not at all used in Italy, despite the fact that there are exceptionally wonderful things there) that makes jewelry, bags, hats, etc from crocheted plastic bags, as well as other things made from recycled plastic bottles and cloth. I bought one of her bags and some jewelry, and she even sent them to me in the coolest boxes she made out of folded magazine pages. Check it out!

"I can't stop eating meat!"

I've recently heard a few people say this, that they'd like to stop eating so much meat, but don't know how to get by without it. How would they get their protein?! And meat is so fast to get ready! Once I saw one of those shows where a judge puts in his two cents' worth after two people fight it out in which a divorced and vegetarian mother was against the fact that her ex went out hunting with their son and they ate the meat together. The whole audience (and also my mother-in-law) kept saying that the mother was pretty much abusing her son by not feeding him meat because how in the world was he supposed to grow big and strong?! I can't remember the judge's ruling, perhaps because it was so stomach-turning that I had to leave the room.

First off, I want to say that I'm not a vegetarian (though I do eat very little meat) even if I would like to be. But I've found that very few people realize wat harm eating meat can do, not only to the poor animal, but also to the environment, your wallet and your own health. And people often don't realize that vegetable protein is very valid, as well as being better for the human organism without harming the environment or mistreating animals, not to mention while costing much less. There's a wide range of legumes (beans, that is) that can be cooked and eaten as they are or prepared into products such as tofu and seitan. And they are really really good.

I've recently started using soy protein, dried chunks of soy which can be used instead of meat. I made a lovely vegetarian bolognese sauce (bolognese is a sauce full of ground meat), first sauteeing garlic and chopped-up carrots, then adding whole canned tomatoes and the soy protein (after having boiled it for about 15 minutes to soften it). Tossed with penne pasta and... voilà! Preparing this soy protein this way, this bag which cost me about €2.50 was worth 6 portions of meat. Not bad! I also made a yummy fennel and orange salad, one of my favorites, cutting raw fennel into strips and peeled oranges into chunks, mixed with a little oil and salt (or gomasio, crushed sesame seeds, instead of salt). No meat and we were stuffed full at the end of dinner.

kitties on potties

Today we finally started organizing our "box," our storage area on the ground floor of our building, where we'd dumped so much stuff that we couldn't even walk in it anymore. And we found lots of fun stuff we'd forgotten about. Such as the tray I used when I tried to potty train my cat. Yeah, like in "Meet the Parents." Like this nice kitty in the picture. That way you don't have to buy any more litter, or clean it, or step on it, carrying it all over the house under your shoes. Ecological and money saving to boot, cool!

I bought the CitiKitty kit, which includes a sort of tray that you fill with flushable litter and put on the toilet seat. It has concentric circles that are removed bit by bit so that a hole opens in the center and gets bigger and bigger until the cat is just forced to do its stuff into the toilet. And finally you take the whole thing off, but the cat keeps "eliminating" right where we do, too.

I was all worked up when I started with our darling Macchia. I got rid of her regular litter box and put this tray on the floor with litter to get her used to using it. When she was ok with it, I moved it onto the toilet seat and she used it there, too. Great! But when I made the first cut (only half of the central circle, the smallest one), she kept doing #1 there where she should've, but not #2. Instead she would do it on our living room rug or in the houseplants with the biggest pots, digging holes in the soil and then covering it up and leaving soily and I-don't-even-want-to-think-about-it-y paw prints all over the house. Oh joy! After 2 weeks of this service, I gave up. And Macchia was oh-so-happy to have her regular litter box back again. Oh well, at least I tried! So if anyone out there is interested in trying, I still have the tray with all the information. Let me know, and it's all yours!

eco-washing

First off the bat, I'd like to excuse my recent non-blogging to the maybe two people who've ever looked at this blog. I've been super busy and haven't had any time at all for writing.

Ok, now that apologies have been made and my washing machine is once again broken, let's talk about washing detergent. I'm always excited to find any sort of ecological alternative. I use hardly any disposable products and our cabinets and drawers are full of lovely washable cloth stuff: napkins, hankies, menstrual pads, diapers, wipes, shopping bags, etc. No matter how happy I am to be throwing out (and buying) so much less crap, I still can't help wondering, but considering the fact that I have to wash all this stuff, are they really so ecological after all? Washing uses water, energy and detergents which pollute the water.

So I went searching for some alternative to detergent. First I found "Ecoballs," plastic balls filled with little pellets which alter the pH of the water, letting it wash much better. In addition, they're anti-bacterial, they don't leave chemicals or perfumes on your clothes, they are much more delicate on the material and they can even make your water a little softer. You use these balls and you never have to use regular detergent again. How cool! I was psyched and ordered them right away on UK eBay (with another product made by the same brand, the "Magnoball," a ball with magnets inside which protect your washing machine or dishwasher from limescale deposits without having to use any sort of chemical agents).

It's true, they are pretty cool, but we all know that nothing is ever as wonderful as it first may seem. First of all, you can't fill your washing machine up completely because the balls need to "circulate freely." And this circulating is damn noisy (well, maybe not the Ecoballs, because they have a sponge ring around them, but the Magnoball is heavy and thumps around). They clean dry and easy removable dirtiness, but if you have harder dirtiness, like oil, blood or wine, not even the special stain remover they toss in with the Ecoballs will get rid of it.

So then I decided to try the Natyr soap nuts that you can find in Altro Mercato stores. The nut Sapindus Mukorossi from India has a natural soap in the shell. You put these shells in a little cotton pouch and you put the pouch in with the rest of your laundry and it works like detergent. Nothing synthetic or chemical and after using them, you can put the shells in your compost. I really like these nuts, even though I've found that the hardest stains still just won't come out.

And so, my ecological-while-still-being-functional solution? Laundry without staining dirtiness (like sheets, clothes worn but not really visibly dirtied) with Ecoballs. Regular dirty laundry with the soap nuts. Worrisome dirtiness pre-treated with that laundry liquid detergent on tap at Auchan, the type where you bring back the container and fill it up over and over so you don't ever throw it away. And everything with the Magnoball (we've got hideously hard water here), but filling up the machine normally.

Plants, wonderful plants!

Macchia, our poor cat stuck in the house since we moved into this apartment without a yard or garden, is super happy to once again have a little fresh cat grass. As soon as I took it out, she can running to munch on it.

I love plants though I must admit that I'm not particularly expert. I hardly ever know what their names are nor the specific care instructions, but generally I get by pretty well. I do a plant and cutting exchange with a few friends and I love giving people plants instead of regular store-bought gifts. Seeing green leaves, delicate sprouts, soft flowers makes me feel at peace and I love to give this serenity to my loved ones. Because of my anti-consumerism, I've decided to grow my own plants for future gifts. I took a bunch of cuttings from my plants, split large plants into smaller ones, and repotted babies growing off of their mommies. We'll see how they grow.

Here you can see how our veranda is transformed into a greenhouse during the winter. This is just one corner and is quite full, enough so that I hope I will never need a book in the bookshelf hidden behind dozens of pots. There are african violets with unusual two-toned flowers, an aloe that has grown at an amazing rate and that gave of tons of baby plants, a begonia and a geranium that looks dead but which comes back to life in the summer with gorgeous flowers.

There is a long piece from a friend's succulent and a little palm that was growing off the base of a palm tree in the courtyard. It hasn't grown even slightly since I potted it, but then again, it hasn't died either. I'm still hopeful.

Then there are babies of a succulent whose name I don't know, one of the many aloe babies, and another cutting from another succulent.

Last week at Auchan I saw this very cool little greenhouse in painted tin with 6 little pots inside to get seeds or cuttings going. I used it for 3 african violet leaves and 3 cuttings of yet another succulent, given to us from friends who moved to Bogotà. It is very cute and cheap....

...though not as cheap as what I used for the begonia and lavender cuttings. You can make a free greenhouse using the bottoms of plastic water or milk bottles, yogurt containers or whatever else you have in your trash. A few holes punched in the bottoms, a transparent plastic bag around it, and the plants are happy as can be with perfect conditions until they start growing a little. A bit less aesthetically pleasing, but who really cares?

My mother gave me a kick-butt old book called "Look, Mom, It's Growing." One chapter that got me really worked up is called "don't throw it away-- plant it!" and describes how to grow plants from produce, for example carrots, avocados, peanuts. I tried out the pineapple one. Nobody thinks that it'll actually do anything. But then again, nobody thought that the lemon and persimmon seeds I planted would've done anything either, but just you look what I found the other day!