5 Green Things I'm Thankful For

On this Thanksgiving Day, I'm thankful for...

1) the beautiful sage green walls in my living room? (lol, ok that's not earth friendly ;-)

Start again:

1) the large yard we have that has room for a veggie garden

2) the fact that we have a yard so it's easy to compost

3) the new windows we're getting next week that will enable us to keep the heat turned down more this winter

4) the curbside recycling pick-up service we have in our city

5) lol the fact that my laptop can go into standby and save power while it's waiting for me to blog...

Vancity Has The Right Idea

Ah ha! No sooner did I write my last post about wishing there were more positive green initiatives rather than a punishing gas tax, than I read an article today about Vancity and their employee environmental perks.

Below is a list of some of the benefits they offer:

• discounts on transit passes and parking for carpoolers
• small fleet of Smart cars and cruiser bikes for off-site staff meetings
• free showers, lockers and bike storage
• emergency guaranteed ride home program that pays for cab rides or a transit passes

Hopefully other employers will follow their lead and introduce similar policies, and the companies that already do have similar programs in place can make theirs publicly known as well to create more momentum...

Oops I killed My Worms

I didn't mean to. I thought I was setting them up in worm paradise - you know, in the tub where all the food scraps are. This was yesterday, and when I checked them today they were no longer, um, wiggly.

I put them in my plastic tub on the balcony, which is the "second stop" for my scraps. The last time I emptied this tub, just for fun I thought I'd put a scoop of soil at the bottom and fish out some worms from the garden heap and add them to this soil at the bottom of the balcony tub.

My guess, now that I've done some reading (should have done that first - sorry little guys!!) is that the tub was too wet and hot. It's plastic, with a lid, and sits in a sunny corner of the balcony. Mind you, as we're discovering this season, sun does not necessarily mean heat!!! (sigh) It's also usually quite wet as well, since one of the things that I routinely dump in there is the last dregs of cold coffee leftover in my pot.

I think I'm going to try again (the worms are shaking in their boots!), only this time with some kind of bedding. I'll update you on how it turns out.

Banning Plastic Bags

Why not??? It's already done in South Australia and San Fransisco, among other places I'm sure.

Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts said on the news tonight that she thinks that banning bags alone is not the answer, and that there should be a more comprehensive strategy in place to ban other things as well (Styrofoam, etc.). Obviously I don't know as much about this issue as she does, but it seems to me that banning just bags now and other things later is better for the environment than waiting to ban anything.

My guess is it's a cost issue? (Or is my ignorance showing?) I guess only time will tell.

Compost

Wow - I'm impressed with those busy little worms (OK, big fat wiggly worms with attitude). I was not expecting my kitchen scraps to be ready for the garden so soon, because I'm doing what's sometimes referred to as "cold composting" - in other words, here's a pile, worms, dig in!!

Today I thought I'd start setting up the garden for planting next month, so I got the shovel and started re-arranging the worms' hang-out. I was happy to find that the compost was ready for use on the garden beds. I'm really interested to see the difference in this year's crop from last year, when I wasn't composting. I'll keep you posted!