blog

Refusing single-use plastics is one of the most positive personal actions we can do to shift the marketplace, and the culture at large, away from practices that are killing the biosphere. But it can be hard to avoid plastic sometimes! What are some of your favorite tips?

A few of mine:

• Always carry my own spoon, cloth napkin, reusable cup with me.
• Refuse straws – since I don’t have a medical condition that would make it hard to drink without a straw.
• Refuse plastic lids when treating myself to coffee at coffee shops; if they say they have to give me a plastic lid on their paper cup, I find another place to get coffee.
• Refuse bottled water – don’t even have to give it a thought; no sacrifice there. I hydrate before going out, or take a reusable water bottle with me.
• Patronize Mom & Pop businesses that let me use my own cup, containers, etc.
• Only buy loose produce; no plastic-bagged produce. Also, some produce vendors at the farmer’s market will accept bags and containers for reuse.

And a tip from a friend:

“And be quick … ‘No bag, please!’ Cashiers are trained in expedience.”

Unfortunately there’s sometimes a lot of shaming and pushback against people trying to refuse/reduce plastics. “Oh, there are so many bigger issues in the world; why are you focusing on that?” The truth is, though, it is a big issue. And, everything we can do to reduce consumption in all other categories helps too. All reductions in every possible category are worthwhile.

Oh here’s another tip (literally): When a business like a coffee shop or restaurant bends its usual rules or practices to let me refuse plastic, I leave the server a huge tip!! A friend and I tipped $10 on a $12 coffee order. Reward earth-friendly practices!!!

Further Exploration:

• Plastic-Free July website: “Join millions of people reducing their plastic waste. Plastic Free July® is a global movement that helps millions of people be part of the solution to plastic pollution – so we can have cleaner streets, oceans, and beautiful communities. Will you be part of Plastic Free July by choosing to refuse single-use plastics?”

• “The Story of Bottled Water” (YouTube video by Annie Leonard, the same knowledgeable, energetic, and persuasive speaker who brought us “The Story of Stuff“).

I know I post about landscaping issues a lot, but the choices we make in our yards (and urban parks, and road medians, and commercial property grounds) are a major leverage point for climate resilience and the restoration of healthy ecosystems.

Leslie Nelson Inman, the highly knowledgeable & dedicated admin of Pollinator-Friendly Yards on Facebook, just posted a great quote:

“… our grass addiction comes at an environmental cost. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, maintaining those lawns also consumes nearly 3 trillion gallons of water a year as well as 59 million pounds of pesticides, which can seep into our land and waterways. Department of Transportation data shows that in 2018, Americans used nearly 3 billion gallons of gasoline running lawn and garden equipment. That’s the equivalent of 6 million passenger cars running for a year. … The Washington Post’s garden correspondent Adrian Higgins has covered everything from using organic fertilizers (or making your own from compost) to avoiding pesticides. The transition to electric lawn maintenance equipment is also well underway. But how we care for our lawns is secondary to the amount of lawn we have in the first place, experts say. Having less grass and more plants is among the most important factors in keeping a yard eco-friendly.”

(From “Ditching Grass Could Help Your Backyard Thrive“; by Tik Root in Washington Post, June 30, 2021.)

In related news, I learned that some landscaping contractors in my region have been spraying, on public lands, herbicides and pesticides known to be deadly to pollinators and aquatic/marine life. In addition, some violations of the rainy-season fertilizer ban have occurred. It’s digusting to me that these companies are allowed to earn tons of our hard-earned tax dollars to poison us.

Even if it weren’t massively destructive, it makes no fiscal sense. As I wrote in my ongoing correspondence with city officials, “Besides the fact that fertilizer runoff is a prime culprit in environmental crises including toxic algal blooms and the deaths of fish and wildlife (such as manatees), it makes no financial sense to be fertilizing an empty lot when we could be allowing native plants to grow there for free; or else using the land to grow fruits and vegetables organically.”

I will keep up my efforts to persuade officials and fellow citizens to change our landscaping emphasis to growing trees and other plants rather than buzzcut turfgrass. The other day I took a 7-mile walk through the midsection of my city. It was a blistering hot sunny day, and there were many long stretches of sidewalk with no shade. Meanwhile I passed the usual armies of landscaping employees on City or university properties, noisily barbering the endless flat swathes of grass. Imagine if we directed that energy toward planting and caring for trees and shrubs. Our city would be much cooler on a hot day (and also much less beset by gas fumes and gratuitous industrial noise).

But really, when it comes right down to it, there is no “us” and no “them.” We have all participated in this sodgrass-idolatry culture to some degree, even if it’s by not speaking out loudly enough against the mass biocide going on all around us day-in and day-out. I’m doing what I can do right now, which is working with fellow citizens and government people to reform our public landscaping practices. It’s harder to control such practices on private property, but

1) at the very least, we can stop using our tax dollars to poison ourselves, reduce our resilience, murder other species, and desecrate the natural beauty of our bioregions; and

2) cities and counties, through their official landscaping practices, can set the tone for private land-owners in a region. By de-normalizing sodgrass idolatry in the public sphere, we set an example and give homeowners and businesses more support for doing the same.

Further Reading:

• “The Record-Breaking Heat Wave That’s Scorching the Pacific Northwest” (Josie Fischels, npr.org, 6/29/21). “In some places, the heat is so intense it has even melted power cables. In downtown Portland, the Portland Streetcar service shut down on Sunday, posting a picture on Twitter of a power cable with a hole burnt into it. … Drought has created a vicious dry cycle
Widespread drought extending from the West and all the way into the Great Plains has only worsened under the heat dome. In the Northwest, a typically wet area, abnormally dry and drought conditions have expanded in a matter of weeks. … Scientists say the warming climate is making both heat waves and droughts more frequent and intense.”

• “The World Speeds Up–And We Slow Down” (Bill McKibben, from 6/30/21 edition of The Climate Crisis (email newsletter of The New Yorker magazine): “Last week, we discussed how the new heat affects human bodies. This week, we need to remind ourselves how these novel temperatures are affecting the planet itself. … during the past seven decades, as it’s got hotter in the Southwest, it’s also got less humid. In most places, the warming air leads to more humidity—hot air can carry more water vapor than cold air can. But evaporation off the sea surface provides much of the moisture, and the desert Southwest is nowhere near an ocean. In the Southwest, and in many other continental interiors, the extra heat is evaporating moisture straight out of the soil, desiccating the landscape and making huge fires all but inevitable. And, as the Times reported, citing Park Williams, a U.C.L.A. climate scientist, it’s very much a vicious circle: ‘Lower soil moisture should also cause temperatures to rise, Dr. Williams said, because there is little or no moisture left to evaporate, and evaporation has a cooling effect.’ The speed with which this happens is remarkable. And it is dramatically outpacing the speed at which humans—our governments, our economies, our habits, our mind-sets—seem able to adapt. AZCentral reports that some golf-course managers near Phoenix are ‘pushing back’ against a plan that would cut their water use by just three per cent.”

• “Ditching Grass Could Help Your Backyard Thrive” (Tik Root, The Washington Post, 6/30/21). The Washington Post’s garden correspondent Adrian Higgins has covered everything from using organic fertilizers (or making your own from compost) to avoiding pesticides. The transition to electric lawn maintenance equipment is also well underway. But how we care for our lawns is secondary to the amount of lawn we have in the first place, experts say. Having less grass and more plants is among the most important factors in keeping a yard eco-friendly.”

• (Added 7/4/21): “Deaths Spike as Heat Wave Broils Canada and the Pacific Northwest” (Vjosa Isai, Dan Bilefsky and Shawn Hubler, New York Times, 6/30/21). “Hyperthermia claimed nearly a dozen lives in one day in one Washington county. A small town in British Columbia set Canada’s heat record at just over 121 degrees Fahrenheit. … In Canada, John Horgan, the premier of British Columbia, said on Tuesday that ‘the big lesson coming out of the past number of days is that the climate crisis is not a fiction.’ … The sizzling temperatures have also imperiled the crops of farmers in British Columbia, wilting lettuce and searing raspberries. … While police usually attend to three to four sudden deaths a day, on average, the department said it has responded to more than 98 such calls since Friday, with 53 of those on Tuesday.”

At some point in the past few months, I had an exciting realization about my 1/10-acre micro urban homestead: It has reached the point of mulch/compost self-sufficiency. In other words, even if bringing in materials from outside (precious oak leaves bagged as “trash” by neighbors; cardboard & newsprint which are a great source of “browns” for the compost; palm duff; and other assorted local curbside biomass) became not-an-option, I now have enough self-restoring biomass on my property to “keep things running,” as it were. Hardy tall grasses that I cut every few months and they never fail to grow back quickly (sometimes I call myself an “urban hay farmer” LOL); large trees I can always prune small branches off of; etc. It’s a great milestone but one I have not taken the time to publicly acknowledge til now.

That said, I sure do cherish those oak leaves, cardboard, and other outside sources of biomass!

#MulchAdoAboutEverything #CompostMatters #SoilBuilding

How about you — What milestones have you hit lately that might deserve a bit of extra acknowledgment and celebration?

“Revenge Spending.” A friend just told me this is the term for the consumer feeding-frenzy we’re seeing as the pandemic restrictions have been lifted. In the one economics class I took in college, we learned the term “pent-up demand.”

I never thought that the stifling of consumer urges would lead to a “revenge” reaction. But, in a society where people feel entitled to what they want when they want it, that unfortunately makes sense.

When I did a search online, the articles I found on “how to avoid revenge spending” all had to do with financial prudence, as opposed to care of the earth and fellow beings. So I thought I’d write up some tips for all of us DEEP GREEN allies.

• Yes you can whoop it up!! Food and drink are a typical “reward” that many of us choose when we’ve been feeling deprived. Nothing wrong with that; we’ve all gotta eat, and it’s one of the best ways to spend time with friends and family. And if you spend with a local business it’s a win for your community too. To make your eco vote go further, choose a dining establishment that has “green” appeal; for example, a place where it’s easy for you avoid single-use plastics; a place that sources from local farms; a vegan café that doubles as a community education center, etc. Oh, and hey! Now that it’s OK to have people over again, you can even use your own kitchen or patio as the dining establishment!

• Buy Black! Spend a nice big chunk of money to purchase goods and services from your local Black-owned businesses; you’ll be helping to dismantle systemic racism while satisfying your spending urge.

• Spending on something useful can be every bit as satisfying as spending on something frivolous. If you have a bunch of cash piled up, there’s no better time than now to soend it on rainbarrels, fruit trees, permaculture design courses and other training/education, bicycles, good walking shoes, and other things that will be durable assets to your household.

• A lot of people are jumping onto airplanes right now. Got faraway friends and relatives and really want to see them? Offset that flight (or car trip, bus trip, plane trip) by buying carbon offsets, and enjoy your trip. A DEEP GREEN friend and fellow permie recently told me she had purchased double offsets for her trip to Cali to see family. Eco green stars for you, sweet friend!

• The pandemic invited us all to look deeper into our life priorities. After seeing so many people go through such hard times from job loss, looming evictions, and other catastrophes, some of us might find ourselves motivated to find more ways to invest in our local community. Laura Oldanie’s blog is a great resource for alternative investment ideas.

• “Revenge” is a harsh motive. A lot of people felt resentful of the pandemic and pandemic restrictions, as though it were something personal done to them. Such a reaction is perfectly human, perhaps, but we can stop ourselves and notice when we’re having it. And we can make a conscious choice that we refuse to take our resentment out on Mother Earth and our fellow beings, including fellow human beings. Instead of re-venge spending, may I suggest re-newal spending; re-generation spending; re-paration spending …

• Constructive revenge: Some things deserve to be targets of revenge! You could take revenge on hunger by buying food for someone in need, or starting a community food-forest; take revenge on environmental destruction by refusing to use herbicides and pesticides in your yard; take revenge on rudeness and entitlement by finding more ways to practice compassion.

Further Reading:

• “Americans look forward to ‘revenge spending’ after a year inside — here’s how to make the most of it” (Alicia Adamczyk; cnbc.com). The header notwithstanding, this article gives tips on how to be sensible and avoid impulse spending. But the author reassures us it is OK to let loose a bit too! (An opinion I share actually; we just need to aim our spending in an ethical and eco-friendly manner.)

Around 1980, Bill Mollison (who co-founded the permaculture design movement with David Holmgren) predicted that in 30 years we’d be having water wars. He was spot-on; the situation with Oregon farmers is a prime example. (“Farmers vs. Fish: Tensions Rise Again in California-Oregon Border Area Water Battle“; Gillian Flaccus, AP in Los Angeles Times 4/13/21.)

With much of the western USA now in mega-drought, and even the typically-mild Pacific Northwest cities of Portand and Seattle forecasting 110-degree temperatures or higher, water is going to become an increasingly serious topic.

Available at the turn of a tap in much of the USA, water has tended to be taken for granted here — though people in many other countries know better.

Sarah Scoles spent a week exploring radical water conservation practices at the household level. Myself, having been doing extreme water conservation (5-7 gal/day) for over a decade now, I can tell you it’s not that hard, actually fun and empowering once you get the hang of it. And as Ms. Scoles points out in her article linked below, every change we make helps shift the culture.

” … our individual choices add up to an enormous demand as a society—664 billion gallons per day. In a 2014 Government Accountability Office study, water managers in 40 out of 50 states said they expect shortages in their states in the next 10 years. By late last year, nearly a third of the contiguous U.S. was in moderate to exceptional drought, the latter defined as widespread crop loss, shriveling reservoirs, and water-shortage emergencies.

“I decided to see how low one person could go to ease the problem, and whether that could make a difference. …

“My experimental footprint was the same size as a Chinese citizen’s normal one. Over in Norway, the per-capita use is just half a U.S. citizen’s, and right around the global average. Which is to say there’s room for improvement here at home. If everyone in the U.S. used 20 percent less—still more than twice what I did—they would each save 152,424 gallons of water a year. That’s 49 trillion gallons across the whole country. When you think about it that way, each of us can make a huge difference—especially if our sustainable actions encourage others to behave similarly.

“And that is how large-scale water-use changes happen, says Missouri State’s Jones. If enough people start employing a particular conservation tactic—leaving liquids in the toilet, ripping out Bermuda grass and putting in native plants—that thing becomes the expected behavior. ‘It’s a culture change,’ he says.

“The community flips its reward-punishment system. Instead of shaming you for your brown-grass yard, friends might instead criticize your lush landscaping.”

Read the rest of the article at the link below. She goes really deep (deeper than I go); for example, she includes the water consumed to produce each type of food she eats, each article of clothing she wears, etc. You might find it interesting; my advice is always “Don’t beat yourself up; every cut you achieve makes a difference.”

By the way, I don’t collect my toothbrushing water in a cup to be taken outdoors; I just brush outdoors, and spit directly into the compost or mulch pile. Easy peasy!

However you do it, extreme water conservation practice is planet-friendly, and makes your household less vulnerable to supply reductions.

“I Spent a Week Exploring How We’ll Have to Live in Post-Water America” (Sarah Scoles, getpocket.com).

I could have sword I’d written a post before that at least touched on this topic. But if I did, I can’t find it. In any case, my friend Laura Oldanie (Rich & Resilient Living blog — see link below) just shared a good article on the nuts and bolts of looking for, buying, and owning a house with friends; see link below.

A friend who lives out on rural acreage wondered why I am content to live on such a small urban piece of land. Didn’t I want more space? And my answer is … No! My 1/10 acre is breaking my back as it is; why would I want more?

To put that in a more positive, permaculture way: I have not even begun to realize a fraction of the potential of my 1/10 acre. When I say haven’t even begun, I mean I have just barely started to build the soil to the point where anything planted there doesn’t instantly die. Progress has happened this year!

What excites me is how many people could live in a modest house on a small urban piece of land, in combination with neighborhood-shared plots for community food forests, communal meadows, and other collective wealth.

Now, most places in the USA aren’t there yet. Many will never be. Some people think that’s communism. Run!!! But, that is my ideal vision.

The Dervaes family cultivates 7,000 pounds of food on 1/10 acre in Pasadena, California! Wow. I don’t support everything they do (such as copyrighting the term “urban homestead” and actually going after other people who dare to use that term). But, I offer them as an example of how little acreage humans can get by on. (Ideally, we’d then leave as much of the remaining land as possible — from highway medians to mall parking lots to schools and churchyards — as possible for wildlife and native meadowlands, scrublands, forests.)

That’s my ideal if I were Queen Mayor of the world.

Back to my little 1/10 acre homestead … As I said, I have not even begun to fully realize its potential — yet, with just me managing it, the work is endless and exhausting (though I find joy and physical/mental invigoration in it too).

It has occurred to me to explore having co-owners of this house. I may do it someday. Certainly I don’t want to be an elderly person living alone in her house. There are so many people in that situation, and to me it’s just not a good thing in many ways. (Though I recognize that a lot of older people like living alone. At least they say they do.)

For the moment, I’m just happy to have housemates who respect the low-footprint theme of this household, and share it to a pretty high degree. Co-ownership is definitely an option I will bear in mind, though.

Further Reading:

• “How To Buy a House with Your Friends” (RideFreeFearlessMoney). Practical tips on all the details from getting a mortgage to splitting expenses to providing for contingencies (so, for example, when one of you dies some crazy relative doesn’t come swooping in wreaking havoc), and more.

• Dervaes homestead (urbanhomestead.org): Family producing 7,000 pounds of food on 1/10 acre. (Of course, traditional cultures have been producing large amounts of food on small bits of land for centuries. I’ve seen many pictures of humble homesteads in Asia, Central & South America, Europe, Africa, where the “yard” is a fat dense green cube of food and shelter.)

• Rich and Resilient Living blog (Laura Oldanie): One of my go-to financial blogs, right up there with Vicki Robin‘s. Simple living, financial resilience, regenerative investment. A recent post of Laura’s that I want to share with you is “Are You Thinking in Sustainable Stores of Value?” . “As I progress in my wealth building journey, I find myself drawn more and more to resilient and tangible forms of wealth. Not only do many of them seem more sustainable to me, they also bring me more joy and meaning, while simultaneously helping me further distance myself from the extractive, life-depleting, soul-sucking economy within which so much human activity takes place. This has led me to focus on cultivating stores of value. … A store of value is an asset that retains its value over time and can be exchanged for money now or in the future. Savvy wealth builders often view them as an additional way to diversify their holdings. Consider them a form of risk management. …” (And yes, owning our own homes can be a store of value. So can cisterns and water-catchment systems. Wonderful post; read the rest to find out about some rich stores of value you may not have thought of!)

To see the photos I’m referring to below, go here to the Facebook post.

We get upset a lot (with good reason) about the damage from clearcutting and new sprawl development. But also hugely damaging is our so-called “landscaping” of existing places.

Until very recently this was just a plain sand, beachside parking lot w various dune vegetation growing around it. Dune daisy, Gaillardia, dollarweed and other. Beach entrance down the street from my house.

Now the powers that be (either the City or the owner of the lot — some developer bought it from City a couple yrs back w plans to build a Marriott) have paved it with hot black asphalt and “landscaped” it. Including what looks like spraying of what they would call “weeds” but was a stable community of various native & dune-adapted vegetation.

When I try to talk about this “little stuff” I’m used to having my concerns ignored or dismissed. But this little action on this one piece of land is part of a huge bigger problem. After all the scientific information that has been published, including in mainstream widespread news outlets, about how we are killing off our life-support system, we are still doing it.

As you can see, a substantial amount of natural vegetation is left, but who knows if it is slated for “improvement” too. Beating myself up bc this stuff happens when my back is turned. Never any notice, no asking advice or input of local residents who have training in ecosystems restoration, permaculture etc.

• We need to stop spraying
• Why are we allowing ANY sod grass monoculture, with its associated damaging regime, on public land in a natural area, especially east of the A1A and right along rivers etc.
• F’ing black asphalt, cartoon mass-produced plants … and cheddar-cheese mulch for “color” — CAN WE STOP.
• The list goes on, supply your own.

My heart is heavy right now, it was already heavy before I came out for my walk this morning and saw this.

I often ask what I’m doing here but I really have no other place to go. Just extra heartbroken this morning. At the beach down the street from my house. I know there are many positive trends gaining momentum, and that for the greater good I can’t afford to wallow in discouragement. Just sharing my raw heart right now. Thank you all for being here.

Please let’s find more ways to join forces and push back against the death-dealing norms.
Heartbroken right now (other stuff not just the environment) – please someone say something good, let’s try to pull together and make some good from the madness we see.

I apologize to Mother Earth all the time, in tears. I tell her I am so sorry for my own part in the madness and destruction.

It’s Sunday, and Fathers Day to boot, but I did leave a voicemail w one city official who i have a rapport with (tone was respectful but distraught, i did not try to disguise my anguish) – he will hear it when he gets to the office tomorrow – and I will continue to work to make progress in this matter and will update you guys. Also I want to organize a regional citizens’ effort to reform public landscaping practices; probably will start with a Zoom meeting and you will all be invited.

(And a comment I added below the post – you can see the photo by visiting the post): Positive example for comparison purposes … Here is a County beach entrance nearby (footpath planted with sea grape and beach grasses alongside). The County did a beautiful job with this. Natural vegetation is part of the unique identity of a place. Can you imagine if this path were lined with sod-grass instead? (and its associated poisons and irrigation requirements). I praise the County for taking this natural approach to landscaping.

Update: On Tuesday June 22, I organized a Zoom meeting of fellow citizens who want to shift our damaging and expensive landscaping practices. If it hadn’t been for my distress at seeing the sodgrass-and-asphalt abomination on the beach entrance at the end of my street, I might not have been motivated to organize this meetup. Some good next action steps came out of the meeting. One is a #PuffyLandscaping campaign celebrating soft, low-maintenance, native/adapted vegetation that requires no chemicals to maintain. So if some situation in your community has brought you to fury and despair, see what kind of good you can turn it into.

Further Exploration:

See my video on this topic here.
(Heads-up: Contains profanity, raw emotion). “After typing my post expressing sadness and frustration about the “improved landscaping” of a beachfront parking lot on my street (posted to this group earlier this morning), I made a video. Different channels reach different people. And I’m learning sometimes that we eco folk, in our effort to sound “calm” and “rational,” may be undermining our efforts to light up a sense of urgency in public officials, developers/companies, fellow citizens. In this spirit I offer this 12-minute video. I hope you find it helpful in your own efforts to activate eco awareness and an appropriate sense of urgency in your neighborhood, city, watershed, and hopefully we pull together for our whole bioregion. We need a shift!! It is not optional!! We owe it to our ancestors and to future generations to clean up our act now.”

Comments re the video:

1) See Katie Tripp’s business card below <under the Facebook post>;

2) In addition to being known toxins to bees, many of the chemicals we are spraying, with our hard-earned tax dollars, are more persistent than “til it’s dry”; they get into the water table and storm drains and from there, into the waterways where they are toxic to marine and aquatic life.

3) To clarify what I said about being available to give talks to your neighborhood group, activist group, church school etc — I offer such talks FREE as part of my self-appointed calling as a freelance public servant. Private organizations do engage me for paid speaking gigs, which is part of how I make my livelihood as I mentioned — BUT my talks for grassroots/neighborhood/community groups are offered free, as a public service from my heart.