Sustainable Living – Sustainable Schmidt

Spring Planting

schmidt — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 20:10:38 +0000

Well, with spring having arrived it is time to amend our dirt and get to our summer planting. I did not, under any circumstances, think gardening was at all cool or interesting growing up. It always seemed the realm of gray haired old people – or at least people who should be old and have gray hair. Now that I am old and cannot pluck out all my gray hair anymore, gardening seems to make more sense. Not sure if that is a good thing, but anyways…

As a parent I appreciate what our garden teaches our girls. They complain about watering of course, and run hot and cold on the whole pulling weeds thing, but they have a good time digging up potatoes and pulling up carrots. And there is no shriek like that that comes from finding a steamed caterpillar in the broccoli we harvested for dinner. Damn things are a perfect broccoli shade of green, no matter how carefully I look for them one always seems to slip by.

bottled water blows

schmidt — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 20:21:56 +0000

Another great piece from the Story of Stuff Project and Annie Leonard. Props to my friend Carlo who sent me this a bit ago.

New Urban Explorer

schmidt — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 22:05:17 +0000

I suppose a lot us think we’re pretty far removed from our explorer past – we don’t get up in the morning ready to hike through the wilderness, foraging for our food, looking for clean water to drink or shelter to warm up in if the elements are harsh.

Do we?

We do get up in the morning, but how many of you have everything planned out; where you are going to have lunch, what are you going to do when you need a drink, that sort of thing. I mean think about it – if you are looking for some cheap eats or you are thirsty in your cube, what are you going to do? Hit the vending machine? The water fountain? A local restaurant that sells pork siu mai 3 for $1.50?

We are all urban explorers in our civilized wilderness, and it makes sense to from a sustainable standpoint to act that way. I try and carry around this most days when I remember:

It is amazing how much waste this little urban camping get up reduces. The water bottle and coffee cup are pretty obvious – at this point everyone should know that bottled water is more expensive than regular tap – and San Francisco tap water is some of the best water you can drink world wide. So let’s be conservative and say that beat up red aluminum bottle replaces 100 plastic bottles each year, and it is 3 years old….

I drink at least a coffee a day 5 days a week, so over the course of a year that is about 250 of those little white lids I do not use, plus another 250 cups & cardboard cup sleeves and a whole bunch of those straw or wooden stirrer thingies (I just use one of my chop sticks)

The wooden utensils, aside from the just mentioned coffee stirring functionality, save on countless plastic knives/forks/spoons that come with whatever lunch I happen to scrounge up – be it cheap chow mein or a pasta salad, maybe some soup if it is especially foggy in the City.

The bags are a big one; San Francisco was the first large city in US to ban plastic bags from groceries – a brilliant move to keep them from ending up in the ocean among other places. And I give props to private companies like Whole Foods Market for offering brown paper bags instead of plastic for produce, that or reusing a plastic one both help us use less. Plus the reusable cloth bag is great for gathering or hunting: whatever tickles your fancy.

Now I screw up and forget my urban exploring kit from time to time, but whether it is the cup I do not use, or the bag I do not have to take, or the coffee stirrer thingy I replace with my chop stick, I feel a bit better about my day. It is not the end, but its another step in the right direction.

To the clowns of the US Senate, do I accept or just acknowledge?

schmidt — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:20:57 +0000

Realpolitik is just one of those facts of life that you learn to accept as you get older…well, maybe not accept, acknowledge I suppose is a better word. If I accept that the struggle against climate change may be futile, perhaps it would be better to just let it go. Most of the effects will likely happen after I am gone. Mass species extinction, rising sea levels, dramatically altered weather patterns leading to drought and starvation – it is probable that all of this really won’t impact me at all. If the statisticians are right, I will die at around 80 or 90, baring some heart attack or accident just around the corner. So whatever happens after 2055 or so is out of my corporeal time line.

But what about my friends who are younger? Those 20 somethings, those teens who are, really, oddly, so remarkable. Most of them will see 2080, when the ocean should be up to about 46th Ave.

And Gabriella, and Amanda? What will they see, when 2090 comes? What will my grandchildren, not yet born see because I accepted something I should not have?

I think I choose rather to acknowledge that some things are horse shit, as my hero of the day Michael Reynolds says in his movie Garbage Warrior. And even if that is the way things are, I can shout into the wind.

So the NY Times depressed the shit out of me on Sunday when it ran a minor headline “Leaders Will Delay Deal on Climate Change” effectively cutting the balls off the Copenhagen talks in 19 days. And I was mad. Pissed. I felt that President Obama had abandoned me, personally. What good was throwing Bush out on his ass and putting in a new congress if we abandon a binding agreement.

Then today new’s analysis “Obama hobbled in fight against global warming” brought realpolitik’s cold water to my face. Even though we have 58 Senators in congress, without 60 to force a quorum and override a filibuster, only jack and a little shit will happen. And only the Senate can ratify a treaty, which is one of the reasons the Kyoto Protocols went right into the trash after Clinton brought them to the Republican Congress. Even with Barbara Boxer and other advocates on our side, the energy just isn’t there. We have jobs hemorrhaging from our economy after 28 years of disastrous Reaganomics. 2 wars, where our soldiers have been badly abused by chicken hawks eager to send other people’s kids off to fight,but scared shitless of going all in with a draft and a war tax. Health Care – where 18,000 people die each year because our health care system serves only corporations, not people.

And I want the Senate to give a fuck about Copenhagen?

So I acknowledge Copenhagen is not going to produce the change we must have. Global CO2 went up by 2 more parts per million from last year. The current number is 384 ppm – and the line by which dramatic climate change is acknowledge to be inevitable is 350 parts per million. I acknowledge this is a body blow to our future as a species.

But I think I will chose not to accept it. So whether it is the car I drive, or the house I live in, or the food my family eats, we can do something, anything, every single day. I will acknowledge that the steps are small, and taken alone probably as insignificant as my ranting here. But the accepting it part can kiss my brown/white ass.

19 days to Copenhagen. Tomorrow I am going to call my Senators and the White house.

San Francisco Public Utilities Commission’s Environmental Street Fair: Saturday September 26th 10 – 2

schmidt — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:57:15 +0000

The SF PUC is hosting a street fair called “Big Blue Bucket Eco Fair” on Saturday the 26th from 10:00 AM until 2:00 PM. It looks like a cool event, and I plan on being there and reporting whats what. Some pre-highlights are rain barrel installation and a used medication drop off. Medication disposal is one of those small things that in aggregate settings, like say a City, has a massive impact. Dumping that last pill or three down the drain has long been an accepted way of getting rid of unused pharmaceuticals, but it has a tremendous impact on local waterways when these chemicals make it to the bay: waste water treatment plans are NOT designed to removed medication from water, it DOES get into fish and harm the waterways. Just another good example of San Francisco doing its part.

Solar Chic – Solar Panneled Bags

schmidt — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 17:57:28 +0000

Great product for you fashionistas looking to make a couture statement about the environment. Love the product, love the story, love the idea: noonsolar

2100 watts today & a belated PCBC Recap

schmidt — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:45:38 +0000

I checked my inverter about midday today and saw that the solar PVC panels were generating 2067 volts. Not too shabby for the Sunset District of San Francisco (if you are reading this from Minnesota and do not know, the Sunset district is infamous for being a foggy mess in the summer, a detail not wholly grounded in reality) I am guessing the panels will produce at least 15 kilowatt hours today, so my eco pride is flowing. How apropos that this weekend is in fact Pride Weekend in the city.

I did visit the Pacific Coast Builders Conference in downtown San Francisco last week. PCBC is the premier trade show of conventional builders on the west coast, complete with vendors hawking their wares at a modern and far more “civilized” closed air bazaar, workshops, keynotes, little plastic badges and a crew of dancers from the gold club handing out coupons. I guess the recession is hitting everyone.

The floor was grim to say the last, it looked like half the number of sellers from last year, and for every regular guy like me walking around there seemed to be 20 people with listless eyes staring out from their respective booths. Whirlpool was jumping, they have Martin Yan every year doing cooking demos, but even he only had about 20 or so bodies when I passed by. The dye is looking a bit orange in his hair, they should have pinched better lighting from one of the LED booths nearby.

Toto had a new to me marketing push called “Totology” they are using to push their water saving line of fixtures, toilets and the like. Props to them, I bought 3 new Aquia Dual flushes this week for some bathrooms I am doing. Lots of the vendors were pushing their Sustainable Credentials with FSC labels, I like that. I met a guy from the Sustainable Forrestry Initiative. Rob Worthington, who was spinning his group’s angle as being a more local/North American oriented type of FSC group. They were originally an industry sponsored group, though he claims they have spun off to be 100% independent. Frankly I do not believe that, any industry group that claims to be “independent” instantly strikes me as bullshit, but I am going to keep my eye on them and see what I see, who knows, maybe they really are trying to do the right thing and balance our lust for wood with responsible forest management.

In general I thought most people were green-washing their products as opposed to really giving a crap about the environment and sustainable building. This is no west coast green to be sure, but even green-washing is to a degree progress. It is just that we need more.

Swimming Pools and Fireplaces

schmidt — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:50:37 +0000

I was reading the paper the other day about home pools, a household icon of the 50’s that still plagues neighborhoods today. Don’t get me wrong, I like to swim, and lounging by the pool, partaking in the occasional ogle, isn’t the worst way to spend a hot afternoon. No, I am talking more about the home pool, the chemical filled holes in the backyard that are used not nearly as much as people thought they might, like a nice pair of Manolo shoes or an Armani suit.

There are 958,000 public and private pools in the state of California. If a tiny pool uses 30,000 gallons to fill, that is at least 285,000,000,000 gallons of water at any given moment, and that is a low number since many many pools are bigger than thirty thousand gallons. How many millions of gallons of chemicals to keep that water “clean”? How many of those pools are left to fester and become breeding grounds for mosquitoes? Now in some places, where it is oppressively hot I can see why you might want one – but wanting isn’t a good enough reason when talking about sustainable living. The environmental costs for private pools are huge. Pools no longer add to a home’s value like they may have 30 + years ago. With so many other options, like beautiful new public pools, the home pool just doesn’t make sense for sustainable builders. How do you justify the costs in terms of water use and pollution? I just do not see it.

And on to fireplaces. Another fixture of the modern home, who doesn’t love a nice fireplace? Well, me for one. Honestly, ask yourself when was the last time you actually used the thing? I think people like the idea of a fireplace far more than the actual fireplace itself. Maybe its the primal nature of the thing, maybe it reminds us of some distant past when we needed a fireplace to cook and keep us warm, maybe its nostalgia…

But hey, it is an item whose time has past. Given the efficiencies available in modern HVAC systems, coupled with the really excellent insulation options now available, fireplaces are just very last century. I am not going to even go down the whole “Burning things is bad” argument – rather I am going to just talk about the space itself. If you are doing a remodel, ask yourself if you need that space? Oftentimes the fireplace dictates how a room flows, restricts how you arrange your furniture, how you use a room, and for what? The one or two times a year you might take a match to the palace, if even that much? I find fireplaces to be a waste of space. They unbalance a living room, dictate focal points that don’t need to be there and limit your flexibility, all of which runs counterproductive to the most efficient use of a space, which is one of the keys to sustainable living. So if your doing a remodel, here is a radical idea, ask yourself if you really need a fireplace, does it really add value to the home, or are you better off without it? The planet is, of that I am certain.

New Urbanism v Suburban Sprawl

schmidt — Fri, 22 May 2009 20:11:25 +0000

Interesting juxtaposition between 2 different concepts of large scale developments – massive mono tonal sprawling tracks, or brand new small towns. I am a city dweller, so neither appeals to me personally, but if I were looking for new construction and a sense of community now defined by strip malls and cars, the whole new urbanism thing doesn’t seem so bad.

Sustainability: Vancouver Style

schmidt — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:36:26 +0000

One of our readers, Kumiko, messaged me last night with a great tip from the Vancouver Convention Centre, an extremely cool new sustainable commercial building in the Northlands. It reminds me a bit of the new California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.