The Greener Truth » Eco Friendly Food

Peddle Power at the Copenhagen Crowne Plaza

Aaron Midgett — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 23:11:49 +0000

I have often fondly talked about my experience with biking in the Danish capital Copenhagen, but a the Crowne Plaza has come up with a great idea to take this to a new level. They have installed two bikes in the hotel lobby that are used to generate electricity. This by itself is a brilliant idea, not so much different from the idea of a gym powered by the patrons (one of our Greener Truth bloggers has always wanted to start a gym like this called the Powerhouse), but they have taken this idea a step farther and passed the savings along to the people doing the work. If you are staying at the hotel, a short workout on the bikes will earn you a free meal or drinks at the bar. This is the first such program that I know about and the Crowne Plaza is using this as a test program before expanding to other hotels. On top of this idea, the hotel was designed with energy saving in mind and uses 90% less energy than traditional buildings. Here are just a few of the energy saving ideas that have been implemented.

-solar pannels on the roof and exterior

-a geothermal well for heating and cooling

-the use of a biogas facility for organic waste

-organic food

-water saving faucets

-low energy lighting and electronics

I think that this is a great idea and would love to see these sorts of ideas catch on. To date, most business think of green practices as costly and unnecessary, but ideas like this will show that it is possible to run a greener business and save money as long as people are willing to think out of the box.

The Starbucks Karma Cup

Aaron Midgett — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 16:49:10 +0000

I have railed on Starbucks (and all the other coffee stores) in that past over all of the wasted paper coffee cups, but after a long time coming, the company has joined with the Betacup program and decided to make some improvements. The Betacup program initially asked for sugestions from customers on how to fight the coffee cup waste. Here is a video explaining the problem and how to find the solution.
Now the winning idea has been chosen, and it is a brilliant one. Instead of redesigning the reusable coffee mug, the solution was simply to give folks an incentive to remember their mug. Every coffee addict that I know has multiple reusable mugs, but I don’t often see them being used. Reusable mugs are hard to clean and easy to forget, so to help people remember, the Karma cup idea will reward every tenth customer bringing a reusable mug with a free cup of coffee. This is so much smarter than a punch card, or a discount, because you never know when you are going to be a winner, so you always have to be on your toes and bring your mug. The only addition that I would make would be mug cleaning station. How many times have you had a reusable mug, wanted to use it, but just couldn’t stomach drinking out of the same cup for another day without washing it? So now, what if Starbucks had a quick wash station so that while you were waiting in line, you could wash out and sanitize your mug? Now that would be convenient, and with the addition of the Karma cup idea, could change some attitudes about coffee.

More information on Betacup and the coffee cup problem

-Betacup: Check out these other great solutions

-Treehugger

-Coffee Waste Calculator

-Sustainability is Sexy

California Bans Plastic Shopping Bags

Aaron Midgett — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 22:52:04 +0000

Well, the trend is catching on and it wont be long before it sweeps the nation. We told you when D.C. started the plastic bag revolution by putting a $0.05 tax on every bag used and now California has gone one step further: they have banned plastic bags all together. Last week, the California general assembly banned the use of plastic bags in grocery stores, pharmacies, liquor stores and gas stations and at the same time put a $0.05 tax on paper bags. The idea is both to encourage the use of reusable bags to help the environment and earn a little extra cash for the struggling state. I for one, think that this is a brilliant idea and I just hope that it catches on in more states. I try to remember my reusable bags when I go shopping, but a little extra incentive wouldn’t hurt. If you need to to get some bags, I like the Baggu, but it really doesn’t matter what you get as long as next time you go to the store, you remember those bags and hope that your state will follow D.C. and California so that everyone else will too.

More Information on the Bag Tax

-D.C. Bag Tax From the Greener Truth

-Green House

-Washington Post

-Wikipedia: Reusable Shopping Bags

-SeattleBagTax.org

-The Baggu from ebay

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Aaron Midgett — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 14:06:14 +0000

It has been a beautiful spring here in Colorado, and my garden has been growing like crazy. Since my last garden post, I have planted cilantro, basil, swiss chard, summer squash, spaghetti squash, beans and black eyed peas to go with my tomatoes, potatoes, onions, peas and spinach. We also have eaten our first salad from the garden, and I need to pick more today before the spinach takes over. So, as you can see, I am pretty proud of my garden and I bet that the rest of you are too.

Here is a picture of our garden, and we would love to have pictures of yours too. So, in the comments, leave us a link to your garden and we will post pictures from our readers in an upcoming post. If you are yet to get your garden going, get out there and give it a shot. It is still a great time to plant, and not too late. This post on square foot gardening will help get you going. You will love doing it, and every time you eat some of your beautiful home grown organic vegetables, you will be glad that you did.

Square Foot Gardening Links

-Square Foot Gardening From the Greener Truth

-Square Foot Gardening Foundation

-Tim’s Square Foot Gardening

-My Square Foot Garden

Spring Planting Schedule

-The Vegetable Garden

-The Farmers Almanac

Planting Tomatoes and your Local Garden Center

Aaron Midgett — Wed, 19 May 2010 13:17:23 +0000

This weekend, we had some beautiful weather here in Colorado and my wife an I took advantage of it. In Colorado we had snow last week, so we are just getting around to doing our “last frost” plantings. It is a little later than most parts of the country, so if you are waiting to get started now is your chance. We started out by heading to our local garden store and bought a few tomato plants. I have been gardening on my own for a few years now, but I have never attempted tomatoes. For some reason I have always been a little apprehensive about growing tomatoes. This may seem silly to all of you professional gardeners out there, but growing up in the south, I don’t think that we ever had tomatoes that made it all the way through the season so that we could enjoy them. I am not sure exactly why, because my mother can grow anything, but tomatoes always gave her trouble. Maybe it was all the wet weather that we had in the mountains of North Carolina.

But anyway, this year I am giving tomatoes a shot. I lucked out with a great local garden center, O’Toole’s, and so that was my first stop. I was blown away by the selection of plants that they had. There must have been 20-30 different varieties of tomatoes, I had no idea where to start. It was a busy Saturday, but after a few minutes of looking I found a very helpful employee, who seemed to know everything about growing tomatoes. I told her exactly how I felt about these delicious red fruits, and she guided me right to the easiest and most disease resistant plants. I ended up with a Brandywine herloom tomato, an early girl variety (that is suposed to mature by the 4th of july), and a super fantastic tomato (after all, how could I pass up that name). They are all vine tomatoes, so they take up about a 1-2 squares of my square foot garden, and I am hoping for the best.

The service that I found at my local garden center is enough to make me avoid the big chains for life. If you are on the fence like I was, then I suggest you get online and find your local garden center. If you go on a weekday, then you can probably find a very helpful employee who would love nothing more than to talk to you about your garden for as long as you want, and even on a busy Saturday, I am sure you will get the help that you need. Stop procrastinating and get planting, and don’t forget to take advantage of all the resources that you have, especially your local garden center.

Composting at Work

Aaron Midgett — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 18:14:44 +0000

Last week at work, I had a great surprise during lunch. When I finished my lunch, I started to throw out my orange peal and found a new trash can. But this one wasn’t going straight to the landfill. We have recycling bins at work, but this latest effort is an industrial composting program. These green bins are lined with compostable trash bags, made from PLA(Polylactic Acid derived from corn) and are able to handle any type of organic material. For your home compost, it is not a good idea to compost meat, paper, or leftovers, but with industrial composting these are all fair game.

My favorite part of this program is that my work has replaced all of the trash bags in the bathrooms with compostable bags and there are signs denoting these bags for only paper. This means that all of the wasted paper from people drying their hands is now composted instead of trashed. I don’t know about your work, but at mine we tend to fill the can in each bathroom every day.

This has been a super easy switch for my coworkers and I, so why don’t more companies try out composting. My first thought was cost, but it turns out that composting is significantly cheaper than throwing in the landfill. So what it comes down to is ease of setting up these sorts of programs. Many cities have composting programs, but they are not well advertised, sometime they cost money to take part in, and often take a little more effort than paying the garbage man. That is not how this has to be, and it is clear that things are changing… slowly.

It is one thing for the National Renewable Energy Lab (where I work) to start a program like this, but I believe with a little effort we can have all sort of businesses around the country start similar programs. So, next time you have an office meeting or talk to your boss, try suggesting a program like this for your office.

More information on Industrial Composting Programs

Many of these are specialized for certain cities, but the general information is very helpful for anyone interested in composting and you can always try searching for your city and compost.

-Composting at Work

-EPA’s Guide to Large Scale Composting

-Compost Portland

-P2Pays Compost

Do You have a Question for the Greener Truth?

Aaron Midgett — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:38:22 +0000

We here at the Greener Truth love to have input from our readers; that’s where we have gotten some of our best post ideas. Our articles on compact fluorescents and recycling batteries both came from readers’ questions, as did the Yike Bike and several other notable articles. We are happy to research any interesting topics in energy, sustainability, the environment, transportation, home efficiency and construction, or eco friendly food. Let us do the leg work for you! We’ll do our best to separate the green from the greenwashed! So, what do you want to know?

-The Greener Truth Staff

Stop Procrastinating and Plant that Garden

Aaron Midgett — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:44:23 +0000

If you haven’t already started, it is planting season again, folks! This weekend, I put in some good hours getting my garden prepped and ready. I really enjoyed the day of hard work. It was a little windy in Boulder, but my dog Nala and I spent Saturday finishing the construction of our newest square foot garden, and I even planted a few early crops (which my wife is convinced was committing plant-o-cide since the weather is set to drop below freezing before the week is over… clearly, she’s underestimating the winter-protection-thingie that I’ve built to slide over and insulate our fledgling plants. It’s such a burden being right all the time…).

For the first time this year, I have added a vertical trellis to our plot so that we can grow poll beans, and so that our melons and winter squash don’t take up as much room as the Fat Bastard from Austin Powers (they do tend to monopolize space… kind of like Starbucks franchises). I never knew that you could make watermelons, pumpkins or butternut squash grow vertically, but not only do the fruits not fall from the vine, they thrive when hanging. The trick is just building a trellis that is strong enough to support their weight.

I built mine with 1/2 inch conduit pipe, re-bar stakes and garden trellis netting. I think it looks great (luckily, my wife does, too… thanks babe!), and it was fairly cheap and easy. The basic idea is to use two 5′ tall posts and a 4′ crossbar connected with elbow connectors to build a frame. Then stand the frame up on two re-bar stakes and tie the trellis netting to the frame. If you do it right, this should be strong enough to hold any vegetables that you can grow (although I wouldn’t try giant pumpkins).

We also planted peas and spinach outside and started several other seeds indoors. In general, your garden should have a start date based on your average “last frost” date, but it is probably time to start outside in most parts of the country. It is defiantly time to plant seeds inside. A good gardening book like All New Square Foot Gardening will tell you exactly how and when to start each seed, but we chose to start our cabbage, swiss chard, herbs and chili peppers inside by the window this weekend.

Enjoy the sunshine, get your garden growing and hope that the rest of the week is as nice as this weekend was. Cheers!

Square Foot Gardening Links

-Square Foot Gardening Foundation

-Wikipedia

-Tim’s Square Foot Gardening

-My Square Foot Garden

Spring Planting Schedule

-The Vegetable Garden

-The Farmers Almanac

Homebrew for St. Patrick’s Day

Aaron Midgett — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:03:41 +0000

View from Croagh Patrick, Ireland

In support of my strong Irish heritage, I wanted to share a one way to make your St. Patrick’s day extra green. No Irish holiday would be complete without beer, but instead of always buying yours in cans and bottles, why not try making your own? While you are paying your bar tab tonight, give homebrew a thought. It cuts down on all transportation costs, enables you to reuse all your beer bottles, is cheaper than buying good beer, and tastes better than any beer I’ve ever had.

The best news? It’s surprisingly easy to brew, and I have had a great time learning all of the tricks since I started home brewing a few years ago. I will start you out with the basics. Then, if you want to give it a shot, feel free to explore some of the great resources at the bottom of the page.

-The first (and probably most important) step in brewing beer is to make sure everything in sterilized. Since beer has to ferment, you want to make sure that the only thing growing in your brew is the yeast that you need to make alcohol. My wife wants me to reiterate this: make sure everything is clean! Crystal clean!

-You’ll need a good beer recipe. The easiest way to go is to buy partial mash or extract kits, but since it is St. Patrick’s Day, here is a great Irish stout recipe that should turn out tasting something like Guinness when done properly.

-Once you have your recipe, you have to steep any grains that are included, but be VERY careful not to boil them. Since you want to make a lot of beer, this is usually done in a 5-gallon pot. In traditional brewing, only grains are used (instead of malt extract), and they add extra flavor to your beer.

-After your grains are steeped, you will add your malt extract, which has all of the sugars needed that the yeast will turn into alcohol. Then all of this liquid must be boiled to fully extract the sugars and to make sure that everything is sterile (see, honey? I mentioned it twice!)

-During the boil, hops can be added for flavor and as an antiseptic to keep the beer from going bad.

-Once the boil is finished, you have to quickly cool the wort (beer before it ferments) and add the yeast.

-This mixture is then put into a fermenting jug (usually a 5-gallon bucket) with a tight fitting lid and air lock (vent that lets air out but not in). It is important to keep the oxygen out at this point, but if the entire bucket is sealed off, it will explode from all of the carbon dioxide released by the fermenting yeast. They fart A LOT

-This mixture is then allowed to ferment for anywhere between two weeks and six months, and believe me, waiting is the hardest part of the process.

-Once all of the fermentation is done, you have warm, flat beer (not very appetizing, I know). Make your beer carbonated by either kegging it and forcing CO₂ into it, or by adding a little sugar to the beer and bottling it for about two more weeks. The sugars will turn into carbon dioxide and make your beer taste, well, like beer.

-Now for the best part: drink the beer. I am no expert, but I have yet to make a batch I wasn’t happy to drink so it can’t be that hard.

My final suggestion to you would be to make sure you either look at some of the links at the bottom of the page, or read one of the recommended books before you try this. It is really easy, but it helps to get some suggestions from the experts

I hope that you all enjoy a night of festivities with more local brewed stout than mass-produced, watery light beer. I will be drinking some home brew on the porch thinking about my grandfather’s booming Irish voice singing his favorite song: Rose of Tralee. All together now:

The pale moon was rising above the green mountain

The sun was declining beneath the blue sea

When I strayed with my love to the pure crystal fountain

That stands in beautiful vale of Tralee.

She was lovely and fair as the rose of the summer

Yet, ’twas not her beauty alone that won me

Oh no! ‘Twas the truth in her eye ever beaming

That made me love Mary, the Rose of Tralee.

The cool shades of evening their mantle were spreading

And Mary all smiling was listening to me

The moon through the valley her pale rays was shedding

When I won the heart of the Rose of Tralee.

Though lovely and fair as the rose of the summer

Yet, ’twas not her beauty alone that won me

Oh no! ‘Twas the truth in her eye ever beaming

That made me love Mary, the Rose of Tralee.

More information on Homebrewing

-American Homebrewers Association

-Wikipedia

-Brew Your Own

-Midwest Homebrewing Suplies

Homebrewing Books

-The Brewmasters Bible

-How to Brew

Square Foot Gardening

Aaron Midgett — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:46:55 +0000

It is almost planting time, but before you dive into the dirt, I thought I’d make some suggestions to encourage you to go an easier route than the traditional garden. In a recent post on composting, I talked about the Square Foot Gardening method (SFG), so as promised, here are some tips to get you going on your very own square foot garden.

Last year when my wife and I moved into our new a house, my mother gave us a gardening book called All New Square Foot Gardening. At the time, I had never heard of SFG, but now– my second year gardening under these suggestions– I just love it. If you are interested in becoming a new gardener or revamping your old plot, I would highly recommend this book.

Square foot gardening was developed by Mel Bartholomew as a way to make gardening easier, more fun and take up less space. With all of the space and time constraints of modern life, Bartholomew’s innovations provide a home garden that is practical and manageable, even with a full time job.

The basic guiding principles are these:

1. Grow more in less space

2. Use better soil

3. Have a more accessible space that is easier to work so gardening takes less time

This may may initially sound overwhelming, but I promise it works and it’s simple! The first step is to grow your garden in four-foot, square boxes instead of long in the shape of long rows. This accomplishes two things:

First, not growing plants in rows allows you to fit a lot more in a given area, and there is no need to allow for rows in which to walk between your plants, since you can reach all the plants in the square-foot garden by simply leaning over. Therefore, when a plant should be spaced 6 inches apart, you can put four plants in a 1ft square as opposed to one plant every six inches with a row on either side.

Second, this allows you to use better soil. While it would be impractical to impost an entire row garden worth of soil, with a 4×4 six inch deep SFG it becomes easy. Instead of digging up and using the poor soil that exists in your yard, build raised beds and fill them with Mel’s mix. Raised beds are fabulous! No tilling, no hurt backs. All you need to do is create a soil mixture of 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite, and 1/3 compost. You will be importing all of the dirt, which has very little to none weeds– NO WEEDING! Also, the soil is full of nutrients from the compost, much more so than your yard soil would be. Lastly, the soil is light and airy, allowing for plenty of water drainage and space for roots to grow.

Since your garden is now much smaller, now, it is significantly easier to work with while providing just as much food. On top of that, you can grow it closer to the house, it requires no weeding, and it looks awesome.

I know I have not gone into all the details here, but this should be enough to peak your interest. You can learn more from Bartholemew’s book or the video and links I have included at the bottom of the page. For me, this has made gardening a real pleasure that I have time to enjoy, and I hope that you get as much out of it as I do. And thanks, Mom, for getting me started on this great project. We all love it!