It’s Easy Being Green

A World Naked Bike Ride Event

I’m having a good chuckle while waking up to my first cup of coffee this morning.  Heads were apparently turning in St. Louis Saturday night, while hundreds of mostly nude bicyclists protested society’s dependence on oil.  It was all part of the “World Naked Bike Ride” which stretched for 10 miles through the city.  So far 70 cities across the globe have unknowingly been host to one of these political rides.  Officers with the St. Louis Police Department checked to make sure the bike riders were within the decency laws, wearing minimums like pasties, body paint, loin cloths and thongs.

For more information about organizing your own World Naked Bike Ride, check out their website.  There is also an entertaining video of what the rides look like.  You can also Google search for pictures using the ride’s name.  It’s quite entertaining.  I’d really like to see one of those come to Flagstaff!

It’s been a long week moving from one house to another. Luckily it was just around the corner but still, anytime you move you take on a tremendous task. I think my body has felt drained this weekend because we’ve had so much to do this week. Plus, I’m no spring chicken anymore as my girlfriend tells me! Our new home is a newer manufactured home with double paned windows and lots of insulation. At least that’s how it seems. We have our thermostat set at 68 degrees and it only runs like once in the middle of the night for a few minutes and then it is done. It’s incredible how much more efficient this home is compared to the one we just moved out of. Plus, the windows in this house are huge so we got a lot of natural light. That’s good for keeping the electric bill down and all of our indoor plants happy!

Well anyway, time to get the blog going again since my office is functioning and the computer is plugged in again. I hope all is well!

Here’s a little treat to share with all of my readers.  I’ve talked about Green Cleaners in the past but now you can actually get a free sample of one of those products.  Head over to the Ecover website to enter for a free sample of an eco-friendly cleaner.  You can also register in their contest to have your home completely cleaned top to bottom in an eco-friendly way.

I just wanted to take a minute to plug one of my favorite places to visit in Flagstaff, The Arboretum. They have more than 2,500 different species of plants that grow great here in the high altitude of northern Arizona and they have great collections of the native plants that grow here on the Colorado Plateau. I like to make a trip out there once or twice a year and see what all is going on. It’s quiet, peaceful and best of all they have a bunch of different demonstration gardens including a killer greenhouse. I envy the greenhouse because eventually I want one similar to it. Anyway, if you live in the area and are looking for a great volunteer opportunity, you should check out the Arboretum. They’re currently looking for volunteer docents to lead the daily tours of the garden. If you’re interested head over to their website to find out more on volunteering.

If you happen to be in the area and want to learn more about gardening with native plants of the Colorado Plateau, stop on in!

When we ran to Sam’s Club the other day we perused the wine selection like we always do. We’ll typically pick up a bottle or two to enjoy over the next couple of weeks. One half bottle practically jumped off the shelf at us. The frosted black bottle of German Eiswein Nachtgold looked mysterious and the description on the bottle sounded downright tasty!

“These precious grapes from which we press our Ice-wine are harvested in the early morning hours when it’s still dark and frozen. Our vintners therefore call this noble and sweet wine “Nachtgold” which means “Gold of the Night”.

The wine hails from the Rheinhessen region of Germany where there are about 26,000 hectacres of vineyards.  It’s known as the largest viticulture region in Germany.  This Eiswein is produced when temperatures in the vineyard drop to 19 degrees Fahrenheit or what they consider a “hard freeze”.  In the darkness, the grapes are harvested frozen and immediately crushed because the water inside the grapes is still frozen, leaving the vintner with a golden yellow liquid to ferment.  It maintains a golden-yellow color after maturation and leaves intense aromas of apple, peaches and melons.  It has a rich mouth feel and a smooth sweetness of caramel or honey.  We loved it.  I highly recommend this dessert wine if you run across it sometime.

A new study out this week is showing that the post-Christmas rush to spend gift cards is apparently non-existent. It’s a sign that everyone is dealing with a continually weakening economy. Our nation’s biggest retailer, Wal-Mart, has been closely watching the way people have been spending their holiday gift cards this month. It turns out people are either holding on to them and saving them for harder times or they’re spending them on basic necessities.

Wal-Mart has indicated that most gift card purchases in their store are going toward food staples like pasta, cereal and canned goods. Even other major retailers are seeing similar trends. Upscale clothing retailers are seeing more people spending their gift cards on socks and underwear then on that new $100 pair of jeans. People are walking right past those plasma screen TV’s, video games, CD’s and other superficial items and picking up the necessities.

This sign doesn’t make me worried. I feel like we’re in a good position to weather a recession should our country really slump into one. We are always stocked up on the basic food items and are continuously looking ahead. What do we need and what do we really need to not spend the money on? One thing we could do better is save. It’s hard right now at this point in our life to really shunt money away into another account. Our retirement savings has been underway for the last 5 years now and we do have about $2,000 in a savings account that never moves. But, I still don’t think that’s enough and would like to have a bigger pad.

In the meantime, I think this latest economic trend shows consumers finally realizing what’s important and what isn’t. You need the basics to live. All the rest are just accessories of our lives that for some wild reason, we feel like we need to drag around with us. I’m glad we’re getting a bit of a reality check. I don’t think our nation has really had to scrimp or save for awhile. While I’d like to think it will get people into the habit of planning financially and making hard decision on what they need and what they don’t, I know it will just return to the same old consumer economy a few years down the road.

The house we’ve been renting for the past six months has apparently been sold or at least there is now a contract pending on the place. That means once again we must pack our lives back up and move to the next place that will hold us and our possessions for another six months when my current contract expires and the possibility of moving to another place with more stability exists. In the meantime, I’ve been wading through some of the stuff that has collected around here: old vacuum (wasn’t sucking very good so we bought a new one), old DVD player (we won a new one at a company party so we don’t really need another) and an old computer tower, the result of a family member’s upgrade.

While it’s simple to chuck these items into your garbage bin and let the landfill take hold of it, it’s not an environmentally sound idea. Electronic waste or “e-waste” for short, is a growing problem and it’s only getting worse. In fact, some estimates now say that 75% of old electronics are just sitting in storage. We know they shouldn’t go into the landfills and contaminate our groundwater and soils but at the same time we’re not really sure what to do with them.

Luckily there are several ways you can put your old items to a better use and perhaps give someone else the opportunity to have a job or learn a new skill set by repairing and fixing these items. Or there just might be someone else who can use what you don’t want anymore. Freecycle is a great way to get rid of things you have just cluttering up the house. Why spend all the time running a garage sale for a few bucks when you can just give something away? Maybe there’s something you could really use but just don’t have the cash in your budget for it. Take a gander at your local Freecycle and see what’s happening. I use my local group all the time both for giving things away and picking up something I really need.

Here in Arizona, I just stumbled across a website setup by the Arizona Environmental Strategic Alliance and ADEQ. The website, Reuseaz, allows people to post just about anything that could be used again instead of just throwing it away. It doesn’t look like it gets much usage right now, which is a shame. Maybe we can all change that! Also, if you live in Arizona and have an old computer that needs to disappear why not think about donating the unit to the Strut Program. Strut takes the old computers and trains high school students on A+ computer repairs and teaches them skills necessary to enter the workforce. Plus, once the computers are fixed by the students they’re then donated to needy schools and families who don’t have computers. That’s a great way to make something old, new again!

But, before you donate anything with a hard drive on it, you need to think about protecting the data that is stored deep in that hard drive’s recesses.  Remember you may have deleted information or cleared off that hard drive but it’s not enough to protect you.  Pretty much any information on a hard drive is recoverable because it never fully disappears.  Check out Talina’s blog post on “Protecting Your Identity” when it comes to hard drives.  Then, you can donate your computer!

Do you know of a program that relates to these three? Post it here and give us a link so we can all check it out and keep these things out of our landfills.