plastic gyre and its consequences

You've probably already seen this horrific slideshow. But, if you haven't, you probably should.

More information can be found about the plastic gyre:
Wikipedia
This article
and this article

Green Drinks presents: A Costume Party!

Hope to see you all at our next Green Drinks. It's going to be a very special event! If you've always wanted to come to one and never made it, this is the one to start with!

Details here

Home Green Home

I will be here, will you? I hope so!

Home Green Home Buy Tickets
Monday September 28, 2009 from 9:00am - 3:00pm
Clark County ReStore
5000 E 4th Plain BlvdVancouver, Washington Get Directions
The Washington State Recycling Association (wsra.net) puts on 3-4 Washington Recycles Every Day (WRED) events every year as a service to its membership and to introduce itself to other members of the green community.

This is the first time a WRED event has been located in Vancouver. Come out and hear from some innovative and conscientious programs and businesses from Vancouver and Portland. Lunch and tours are included in the registration.

Come learn about:
Clark County Habitat for Humanity ReStore
Computer Reuse Education and Marketing (CREAM)
Bi-O-Kleen
Green Star Flooring
Metro Paint
DRS (Drywall Recycling Services) and
United Natural Foods

Ticket Info: $80 (WSRA members $65)

Green Drinks!

It's been awhile since I've posted Green Drinks to my site.* Here's the info for the next Green Drinks:

Where: Lapellah near the new Fred Meyers off of HWY 14
When: September 29th-Informal intros start @ 6 PM (feel free to gather earlier)
Who: Anyone is welcome

This month our 5 min spiel speaker will be Kendra Pearce from Urban Farm School. Urban Farm School is a Clark County based small business that is dedicated to helping the common person find the knowledge and confidence to grow and preserve their own food. UFS offers private garden and canning consultations, workshops, lectures, family events, and GardenforLife parties. Please, visit www.urbanfarmschool.com for details about our services and upcoming class schedule.

*Please be patient, I'm trying to find a good "calendar of events" plug-in for this site. Until I do (any suggestions?) I have to just make events their own posts.

Upcoming events in the area:

Our very own Halloween costume party! Please mark your calendars for Friday October 30th. We are organizing music, drinks, and costume prizes. So get creative and dream up a great costume. More details soon to follow. ;-)

Reused wine bottles make great garden torches

This is a beautiful tutorial for creating hanging garden torches from wine bottles.

Hat tip to Veedub

Dear Reuser #1

I've always wanted this blog to be a forum for answering questions from the public. Awhile ago, I got a few questions, but unfortunately got so swamped with work, I've been a bit behind with blog posts. Here's the first of what I hope to be many questions.

Dear Reuser,
I have a dead lightbulb and am wondering if I should throw it away or recycle it?

If the lightbulb is CFL(spiral) it needs to go to household hazardous waste (all flourescents contain a small amount of mercury to work and this can be recovered and used again if taken to the correct place.) If it's just a normal, standard bulb, you can just place this in your normal garbage. The glass that is used in incandescent light bulbs cannot be recycled with container glass-it's a different consistency and composition and can cause structural integrity issues in recycled glass containers. Therefore, it's best to just throw these away (at least for now.)

Parking meters as bike lock-up stations

Good to see they reused the parking meter infrastructure, instead of just trashing it.

Hat tip to @agreenliving for the link.

Gardening

That was so much fun! Earlier this summer, I had FINALLY finished my planter project (a whole post will be dedicated to that, since I reused many materials for it) except for watering and actually planting something. Then, I let it sit, unplanted for almost two months! (Oh, the tragedy!)

Earlier tonight, I'm chatting with Dear BF, waiting for him to come home from work and reading Urban Farm School's blog and I casually type to Dear BF "I wish I had more time for gardening." and his reply was "You could be gardening right now!" He had a good point!

So, I planted some items. My lazy herb garden has been ridiculously successful this year, so we'll see what comes of this. As you probably have already surmised, I'm about as lazy as they come in terms of gardening. Even if I get baby carrots that I end up giving to the dogs, that will be a WIN!

Honestly, I've already won because I got a little bit of exercise and a couple hours of pure gardening bliss.

The items I planted in 3 of my 5 planters are:
nasturtium
marigold
random herb mix from Cedar Grove Compost (promotional item from conference)
random seed from Uncle Dennis. (guessing it's some kind of onion, but could be completely off.)
basil seed
chives (have grown this same bunch of chives indoors for almost 2 years)
carrots
onion
parsley
butter crunch lettuce
three basil plants (two I had in pots and one rooted from farmer's market basil)
broccoli

I'm probably way too late to be planting most of these items, but we shall see!

Windbelt

This is another departure from my normal reuse posts...or is it?

Here's a nifty article about a company creating wind power with almost no moving parts. Perhaps they could reuse "waste" fabric for these from another application?

I just found the article (and technology) interesting.

recipe: Cream cheese pie

This is a departure from my normal green-centric posts. This is a special Twitter request via @groceryoutlet

Cream Cheese Pie
Ingredients:
pre-made graham cracker crust -or-
1/4 C crushed graham crackers
1/2 C sugar
1 cube butter
-Cut butter into crackers and sugar and press into pan

filling:
1 pkg cream cheese (I use neufchatel for less calories-works just fine.)
1 can sweetened condensed milk (NOT evaporated milk-not the same thing!-I learned this the hard way. But, I have used the "lite" stuff and had it turn out fine.)
1/3 C lemon juice
1 T vanilla

beat room temperature cheese in bowl until fluffy, add milk, beat, add lemon juice and vanilla. Mix. Pour into pie shell and chill 5-6 hours. Serve with fruit topping if desired.

I call this recipe the lazy girl's cheesecake. It's denser than cheesecake and a bit different taste. But, if you like cheesecake but don't want to put the work in, this is YUM!!!