Rooms 312, 310 and parent volunteers went to a dump where all the recycling, trash and compost goes.
First we arrived and had a long talk about where it all goes. Two people tried on a plastic overcoat and dress. They were made of recycled materials.
Next we went to see a artist who showed us the start of her old wood porcupine house. She talked about it and then we all went to see the dump where all the black bin goes.
We saw a truck put lots in and we saw a lot of things shouldn't be in there. It was VERY smelly!
After that we went to see a very nice sculpture garden where artists had used old recycled materials to make amazing pieces of art.
After that we headed back for snack. Then we got back on the bus and went to the recycling centre where we climbed more stairs and watched recycling being sorted. After a few minutes we went back to the bus, drove to a nice park, ate lunch and played games on the slide and play structure. Then we went back to school We had had a very interesting and fun field trip.
We took our first one out for the day on Sunday. It is so very easy. I booked a hatchback online - website is also very very simple to use. I popped round the corner a couple of blocks from my house and found it in a car park. Your card opens the car during your booked hours. There's a pad on the windscreen on which you lay your card and it unlocks the car. Then you get in and drive off. If you need to buy petrol then there's a card to pay for it in the pocket of the sun visor. You only start paying for fuel once you've driven over 180 miles. The insurance costs are included in your membership fee. So total cost for the day for our car was just over $80.
So what did we do. Well we shopped at Trader Joe's - the less upmarket Whole Foods - for the first time. We then headed off to a garden centre so I am now the proud owner of a lemon tree, some geraniums, lavender, a blueberry bush and I've planted some lettuce and oregano.
And then we headed off to the beach. The day was glorious and it seemed like the whole of San Francisco had headed down there.
It would be nice to think that I'm just expert at finding good food stores or that my incredibly developed sense of smell was leading me to cakes, bread, butchers and ice cream. But apart from Anthony's Cookies, that isn't true. I have two invaluable books to help me.
The first (Patricia Unterman's San Francisco Food Lover's Pocket Guide) is a personally selected guide to restaurants, cafes, bars, groceries, bookstores, equipment stores. It's short but detailed and so far hasn't missed once. I wouldn't have found Kamei, the kitchen equipment shop in Richmond, without it, or Dianda's Italian American Bakery, and for that matter we wouldn't have eaten at the Turkish restaurant, Troya. Unlike most guides this book isn't written for the visitor, though they would also find it useful. I think if you like food and live in San Francisco you really should own a copy of this, certainly if you've just moved it is a big help. Thanks to Celia Sacks at Omnivore for recommending it.
The second book is the Green Zebra book of vouchers for local, green and eco-friendly businesses. I'll admit I greeted this with scepticism at first. It is sold at our school to raise money and I wondered how useful I would find it. Actually, it has already paid for itself in savings - it cost $25. But it has also sent me off to less known shops and away from chains, which is all to the good. The book itself has some front matter about green issues, including handy things like a guide to which fish you should eat and which you shouldn't, which since I'm near a different ocean is all different from the guidance back in the UK. Then there are over 300 different organisations offering discounts from a few dollars off, or a free coffee to 20% off in some cases. The businesses range from restaurants, through food markets, to DIY specialists, Pilates studios, museums and so on. It's an idea that could be transferred I think - a very good way to get people to look for and try new small ethical businesses.
Next week is National Zero Waste Week - and I am currently trying to clear out many years' worth of clutter in preparation for travelling light to the US in October. I don't think I'll be participating. Not that I'm not trying to be good. I recycle what I can, I'm giving things to charity shops, friends and will be freecycling like crazy in due course. But what do you do with empty DVD cases? The DVDs are in a handy case to travel and all the paper and cardboard was duly recycled. But that still left me with a sackful of non-recycleable plastic. Please don't tell me I could have done something creative or there's someone who'll take the stuff because it's too late and it went in all probability to landfill. So apologies to The Rubbish Diet. I'll try. But Zero right now is just a bridge too far.
And while we're at it 10:10 is encouraging everyone to make a vow to cut their carbon emissions by 10% by 2010. And what am I doing? I'm moving to the States. My carbon footprint is about to explode, and after I've been so well-behaved. I have low energy bulbs, a Wattson, I froze the family last year rather than use the heating, we drive as little as possible, I grow my own and eat local, I hardly ever fly, I don't have a tumbledryer and so on.
So I'm not going to take the vow. What would be the point? But I'll do my best to see what I can do about reducing our footprint once we get there. And if I find it's very difficult to avoid using the car all the time, flying lots and generally abusing the planet's resources, then I shall at least feel enormously guilty about it.
Both Rubbish Diet and the Cottage Smallholder have been discussing recycling and minimising waste, and Cottage Smallholder in particular has been looking at milk. When we moved here one of the first things I did was set up a milk delivery. There are lots of different ways to buy milk - in plastic recyclable bottles, in cardboard cartons, in plastic sachets to pour into jugs but to my mind, it doesn't matter how green or minimal your packaging is from the supermarket, nothing beats a simple milk bottle which gets used 20-30 times before it is recycled. And my milk bottles also come with orange juice inside so no more tetrapaks. Yes it is marginally more expensive but there is less waste of the milk as well as the container, and there are far fewer emergency trips in the car.
Thank you to Romilly for pointing me at this programme. According to I-player you'll be able to watch The Natural World episode on farming without oil until 17th March. It's not highly detailed but it is highly thought provoking, a bit scary and also inspiring. It also made me feel woefully ignorant of our biodiversity and how nature works. I dropped biology at 13 and to be honest haven't really been interested in it until recently when on acquiring green wellies, I find I might actually need to know this stuff to understand compost, plants, insects and so on. Anyway I encourage you to watch this if you're in the UK.
I encouraged my neighbours to start composting and feel a bit responsible as they've been having problems with things not rotting down as they should. So a couple of days ago, I spent an hour or so emptying out one bin and turning it over.
What I found when I got the bin off was this.
A very dense bottom layer and lots of dry matter on the top which mostly came from the chicken house.
I took the top layer off and then dug through the bottom layer which it turned out had lots of sludgey green lawn cuttings.
They were thick and gloopy and stank. The good news was that the bin had lots of worms and that most of the matter had rotted down to some extent but the grass cuttings were clearly a problem.
Now I've put everything back in, in alternate broken up layers of wet rotted stuff and dry brown matter. Hopefully this will sort it out. It's certainly shown me that you can't stuff your bin full of grass and expect good compost.
You know it's cold when even the locals are discussing (and in one daring case, exhibiting) their thermals in the school playground. I'm used to being the wuss from London in seventeen layers on a crisp spring morning surrounded by the great and the good and the locally bred in t-shirts. But not right now. We're all thoroughly covered up and last night it was -7 or thereabouts round here. So the heating is on. Look, I'm not superwoman. It's bloody cold right now and this house is chilly at the best of times. Still I don't think we've had the heating on in the evenings more than a total of two weeks this winter so far, which is pretty good.
Now I'm off to watch a film next to the wood burning stove which is also producing some chicken stock for me. Second time I've made it this way, and hopefully this batch won't end up down the sink mistaken for dishwater, Tom.
It's a bit of a bugbear for me. The school and the playgroup set up postboxes for the children to send cards to their friends, and of course this is very tempting, if not socially essential. Which means that muggins here found herself making (!?) 30 or so cards for two little girls to send to people they see every day. I'm not sending cards to people I see every day, just to people I don't see which is still over 50 cards. In older daughter's school assuming every child sends around 15 cards, that's at least 3000 cards. Which is absurd and a ridiculous waste of money/paper and I know they love to send them, and it's fun to be the postman delivering them to the children in different classes, but it is still ridiculous. I however had no courage in my convictions and after much muttering to other mothers in the playground, I still gave in this year. Hurrumph.
I am in love. The object of my affection is flat, beige and electrified. I surprised Tom the other night with an electric blanket and we both agree, it's wonderful. The bedroom no longer needs heating (well that point is up for discussion). Instead we disrobe at top speed and leap into the bed to be greeted by warmth. No more desperate clinging on to my equally cold husband, who really objects to my supercooled feet. And Wattson tells me, it is an economical user of electricity, so that's all right too.
It's worth heading over to The Guardian today to see this year's carbon atlas. And if you do, have a look at this on Oliver Postgate, the man behind Noggin the Nog, Bagpuss, Ivor the Engine and the Clangers, who died yesterday. I was a Clangers girl. Tom is a Bagpuss boy. How about you? And why don't they make magical programmes like that anymore? Ones which tell stories in soft quiet compelling voices and take you places you've never been, and can make you feel happy in a sad kind of way. Thank you, Mr Postgate.
Since Wattson began to make his presence felt, we are all busily turning stuff off. The other day I looked at the readout and thought, something is on that shouldn't be but was damned if I could work out what. Finally after much hunting around, Tom realised I'd left the utility room lights on (there are at least 7 down there for different areas of the labyrinth). The girls are getting good too. Mind you, I was a bit worried to find our energy use went up in week two, instead of down but I think we're still getting used to our not-much-central-heating policy, and it has been bloody cold lately. On Saturday, Tom and I had a seemingly endless conversation and analysis of whether the not-much-central-heating policy would in fact save us money based on our negligible data from Wattson, our estimate (doubtless hugely inaccurate) of how much wood we burn and the cost of the oil we use. Pick a number, any number, would sum up the results.
Meanwhile, yesterday I made chicken stock on the wood burning stove. Which was strangely satisfying. Food with no additional energy use.
I can't stand shopping for boring stuff and by boring I mean washing powder or dried pasta or bread flour. So I'm always looking for ways to avoid doing this and my latest is to buy in bulk. I realise this doesn't help if you have no storage space. But if you do, then why fill your trolley and lug bags of stuff home each week when you can have good stuff delivered, not need more for weeks, and it often saves money.
My bread flour currently comes in 16-25kg sacks from Shipton Mill in Gloucestershire, ordered online. It is lovely quality stoneground flour and costs the same as Waitrose own brand organic - so not cheap but not the price you'd usually pay for flour of this standard in a supermarket. I've also bought from Bacheldre (but they send individual bags not sacks) and from FWP Matthews, who are aimed more at the commercial baker but have a great range for home baking too. And some fabulous French flours from Moul Bie.
Coffee I buy every couple of months or so from Hasbean. It isn't cheaper than the shops but I am a terrible coffee snob and like freshly ground coffee in the morning from good quality beans, and you can't really get that from a supermarket. Hasbean sell a huge variety of delicious coffees as well as tea and all the paraphenalia to do with tea and coffee drinking.
My latest discovery is Wiggly Wigglers who are selling bulk Ecover products. You can get a 10kg box of washing powder or 5 litres of washing up liquid. Both are cheaper than Tesco, and if you like their shower gel, a 5 litre bottle is half the price.
Now I want a bulk pasta supplier. You can get multiple packets from ethicalsuperstore but it's the more expensive, worthy kind (which can mean inedible) so there's no real saving, and you still end up with the same amount of rubbish. Anyone know where I can get a 5kg bag of basic penne or farfalle?
Something I watched last week, from the Web 2.0 summit held in early November (just after the election which explains a lot of the comments). Anyway I think this is interesting and if you have time to watch it, hope you do too.
(Quick summary: he talks about the election, Web 2.0 and TV, the environment amongst other things).
Tom's cold and I am too so we've had a slight change to the no central heating regime. The mornings are just too chilly and I have a choice between getting up at 6ish to get the fire going before the children emerge, or turning on the heating for an hour or so to get the house warm first thing. Sorry but I just like my rest. No heating the rest of the day though. And I shall be watching oil consumption versus electric heaters with my nifty Wattson and seeing which is best for energy use/cost.
I find myself watching more television these days though not on television. BBC i-player is great (if you live in the UK) - suddenly TV reviews have turned into "why don't you watch this" columns instead of "why didn't you watch this and now you've missed it" columns. But actually most of what I'm watching isn't available on TV at any time.
The Do lectures from Howies are stimulating and interesting and varied. And I'd also recommend O'Reilly's Web 2.0 Summits. Much is about new technology, but the keynotes and interviews aren't too technical to follow and sometimes they aren't technical at all. Last night, I watched John Battelle interview Michael Pollan about food, the oil economy and what changes are needed to alter what we eat, the way we grow it, our health. Here it is.
Other stuff I've enjoyed: Clay Shirky, Lawrence Lessig, Tim O'Reilly - and yes this is a bit geeky. Blame Tom. He has clearly brought out my inner geek.
My brother-in-law came to stay this weekend so in his honour and for his comfort, we turned on the heating for a couple of hours in the morning, and four hours in the evening. And to be honest, it didn't make a lot of difference apart from in the kitchen. And I was a bit shocked to see how much electricity it used as well as burning oil, and although the heaters use quite a lot of electricity too, I don't think that it's as much energy in total as the heating. So it's off again. I think the fact is we live in quite a cold house and we're getting used to it. B-i-l thought it was cold whatever we did, and wore his hat indoors all evening.
We have a new member of the household. It's small, perfectly formed and proving to be a dominant personality. We've all taken to staring at it transfixed, the children rush to please it and we're a bit shocked about what it's telling us.
It's a Wattson. Probably the most fashionable (and more expensive) version of a new trend - measuring your electricity use. You can get free versions from your electricity supplier in many areas, and you can buy cheaper versions. They work by clipping to the cable that comes out of your meter and then if wireless send a readout to the display in your home. We went for the Wattson because it looks rather nice (my reason) and it has accompanying software that is Mac compatible allowing you to carry out detailed long range analysis of your electricity usage (Tom's reason).
Actually I've been waiting just over a month for this little beggar and when it did arrive, the transmitter was faulty. But luckily DIYKyoto responded very quickly and I had a new transmitter within two days. I think they are a victim of success as they are currently having trouble keeping up with orders. And having plugged Wattson in, I can see why.
There is a very simple readout. As you can see we currently have ours in £s. Or when two ovens are going £££££££££s. You can have it in watts too, but we thought £s would concentrate the mind. The figure shown is how much you would pay for electricity in a year, at the current levels of use. There is also a system of lights - blue for lower use, purple for average and red for high. This makes it very easy for the children to understand and has led to them rushing off to turn their bedroom light off just to see the numbers go down and the light change.
Things I've learnt since it arrived. Lights don't use much, except small halogens. My computer uses not much and a lot less than the television. The oven uses stratopheric levels. And turning on the central heating as we did this weekend (more on that later), uses quite a lot of electricity even though it's oil we're burning. Presumably that's the pump to send the water around the radiators but it is something I hadn't taken into account when deciding to go without central heating most of the time.
The idea is that by measuring and understanding our use of electricity, we can modify our behaviour. Understand your behaviour and you can gain control over it. There's more on this in this Do lecture by Matt Jones and Russell Davies, and in particular they mention a project in Finland where the whole city could see how much energy they were using and see how what they were doing affected the light display.
I'll admit it, I very nearly weakened during half term. It could be something to do with the very cold frosts, or that we had five windows replaced on the coldest day so the temperature of the house plummeted, or that we were in a lot of the time with the children and I just noticed the cold so much more. But I didn't and actually things are going quite well this week.
I have learnt though that it takes forward planning. You need to remember to turn on the heater in your bedroom a little while before you take your clothes off to get ready for bed. And that the children prefer their hot water bottles to be in the bed waiting for them. And that on dark and stormy nights (and as I'm in the Black Mountains, I get a lot of these) you're amazingly pleased with yourself if you've remembered to bring in enough wood for the evening.
And the other thing I've learnt is that you use a house differently by season if you live this way. We tend in the warmer months to live in the kitchen which is large and convivial and has windows facing east and west for lots of light. But now we've moved a table into our sitting room which has the wood-burning stove so is always warm, and we're eating, playing, and right now I'm typing here.
So I think it's going rather well right now though admittedly apart from being very wet, it isn't that cold yet. However, I think I may slacken the rules for guests. Is it terrible if I turn on the heating for a couple of days over Christmas when the in-laws come to stay? What do you think?
A widespread frost, sleet, more snow on the tops of the mountains. And hopefully two carpenters to install five new as yet unglazed windows down the west side of the barn. Not great timing. There is definitely potential for disaster here. Or at least much exposure to the elements. I'll let you know how it goes.
