Category: Uncategorized

Life Rolls On

A lot has happened this year already. I’ve applied for and been accepted into the University of Washington’s Master of Science in Information Management program, which I’m hoping will help me to better understand how information is conveyed and manipulated. I’ve worked very hard as the Information Technology Manager for Evergreen’s Writing Center despite only being a 20 hour/week position, doing everything from applications development to budget proposals to presentations at this year’s PNWCA conference (yes, again). I am now also a Professional member of the Association for Computing Machinery, upgrading my former student status.

In a week or so (on May 11) I’m off to Ohio to finally meet a friend of mine that I’ve known online for half my life. I’m worrying about finding housing in Seattle for graduate school and worrying about finding a job (and worrying even more about the fact that both almost have to happen at once). Amanda, my girlfriend, is in Ireland, enjoying herself immensely by the sound of things. We’re having new mailboxes installed.

In short, life rolls on.

Ten Pieces of Literature on Trash (Nonfiction)

Below is my list of some good titles to pick up if you want to come to a better understanding of how waste is treated as a part of our identity. These titles aren’t ranked in any particular order, though if you start with anything, start with Ryan and Durning’s Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday Things and follow up with Royte’s Garbage Land.

  1. Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash by Elizabeth Royte (2005)
    ISBN13: 9780316154611; ISBN10: 031615461x
  2. Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash by Susan Strasser (2000)
    ISBN13: 9780805065121; ISBN10: 0805065121
  3. Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday Things by John C. Ryan and Alan Thein Durning (1997)
    ISBN10: 1886093040
  4. Rubbish!: The Archaeology of Garbage by William L. Rathje (2001)
    ISBN13: 9780816521432; ISBN10: 0816521433
  5. The Toilet Papers: Recycling Waste and Conserving Water by Sim Van Der Ryn (2000)
    ISBN13: 9781890132583; ISBN10: 1890132586
  6. This Place on Earth: Home & the Practice of Permanence by Alan Thein Durning (1997)
    ISBN13: 9781570611278; ISBN10: 1570611270
  7. The Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawken (1993)
    ISBN13: 9780887307041; ISBN10: 0887307043
  8. Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution by Paul Hawken and Amory Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins (2000)
    ISBN13: 9780316353007; ISBN10: 0316353000
  9. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough and Michael Braungart (2002)
    ISBN13: 9780865475878; ISBN10: 0865475873
  10. eco-structure Magazine by Spiderweb Publishing, published eight times yearly

I realize the slight irony here of recommending print materials that will, depending on what condition the book is in when you read it and the type of paper it’s printed on, will further the nation’s environmental crisis. This is why I link to Powell’s Books in Portland, OR almost exclusively – this is a great used bookstore that has almost every title you’d ever want. If you want to do even better, borrow these titles from your local library!

Spoonfuls of an Elephant

Very slowly (since somewhere around early December), I’ve been absorbing Elizabeth Royte’s book Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash. This is a wonderful book that makes me think a lot about my freshman year in college, when I did, in fact, follow the trail of my own trash. But that’s another post.

There’s a part of the book where Royte is talking to the manager of a New York scrap yard, and when describing the amount of scrap metal the author was seeing versus the amount of metal processed by the yard in a single year, the manager, Steve Shinn, said that it was "spoonfuls of an elephant". What a wonderful, wonderful turn of phrase that applies to this nation and its approach to energy conservation and environmentalism perfectly, with one minor tweak: we tackle the issue in spoonfuls of a white elephant.

Continue reading →

Long life? Eh.. not so much.

The local news rag, aptly named The Olympian, republished a story from the Associated Press wires this morning entitled “Report finds prison an answer to long life“.  However, we’re apparently admitting corpses to prison, so it seems like this may not be an answer after all.  The article states:

“Eight percent were murdered or killed themselves, 2 percent died of alcohol, drugs or accidental injuries, and 1 percent of the deaths could not be explained, the report said.

“The rest of the deaths – 89 percent – were due to medical reasons. Of those, two-thirds of inmates had the medical problem they died of before they were admitted to prison.” [emphasis mine]

Now, this sentence can actually be correctly read – I presume they meant that the rest of the deaths were attributable to previously existing medical problems – but as written, this is hilarious.  Someone ought to write a letter to the editor on how corpses can come back to haunt us and thus should be tried for their sins.  I suggest that perhaps the reality is that the maggots that feed off the corpse become guilty by association, so therefore, they need to be jailed.  Or perhaps the Thurston County Coroner just got tired of all the dead bodies.

It’s either that or we’ve discovered the fountain of youth – die and be imprisoned, live forever!

Where we’ve been…

2006 was a banner year in increasing awareness about sustainability, the importance and significant impact of energy policy, and increasing governmental support for sustainable approaches to living. Actually, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times beat me to calling 2006 the year of green:

“. . . I think the most important thing to happen this past year was that living and thinking ‘green’ – that is, mobilizing for the environmental/energy challenge we now face – hit Main Street.

“No more. We reached a tipping point this year – where living, acting, designing, investing and manufacturing green came to be understood by a critical mass of citizens, entrepreneurs and officials as the most patriotic, capitalistic, geopolitical, healthy, and competitive thing they could do. Hence my own motto: ‘Green is the new red, white, and blue.'”

– “And the Color of the Year Is…”, The New York Times, Friday, December 22, 2006, Page A31

2006 was the year when biodiesel saw drastic increases in popularity; when Wal-Mart began to sell compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs); when the Environmental Protection Agency, for the first time in years, rethought the way it assessed automobile fuel efficiency; when awareness no longer confined itself to a select group.

Up to this point, issues of how we spent our energy resources were on the back burner and not widely understood. No longer can this remain true after the spotlight has focused so squarely on what sustainability means and what still needs to be done.

Personal Energy and Sustainability

Allow me, if you will, to digress a bit from what we typically call “energy”. Certainly, Sean and I write a lot about solar power, geothermal power, energy incentives, carbon offset programs, and all the rest – but there’s another crucial component in the move towards sustainable action that seems overlooked, perhaps because it’s not well-defined (or even really mentioned) under the heading of “sustainability” or “the green revolution”.

After working at Evergreen’s Writing Center for several years in various roles, as a writing tutor and now as their Information Technology Manager, there has been one thing that has been hammered home to me about the way people write: we go through cycles. Now, I don’t mean “cycles” in the sense of write/review/rewrite/review/repeat, though that’s certainly an important one; the one I mention here is the energy carried by the writer that exhibits itself in their writing. For several months, the energy that I have that allows me to write about a topic and to feel like writing has been almost nonexistent (which explains why none of my blogs have been updated in a while).

A lot of being able to practice sustainability has to do with managing your own beliefs and manifesting your energies towards creating a better world for everyone else and a more healthy, enjoyable environment for yourself. I’ve been doing this a bit lately by trying to get rid of things – part of it is spring cleaning (a little early), but part of it is my dissatisfaction with my material approach to life. Of course, I say this realizing that I am very materialistic and that attempting to minimize that impact can be hard if not impossible in your mid-twenties.

My energy towards writing, I believe, is beginning to creep upwards again; as a writer at heart and as someone who knows that writing will always be central to my life in some form, this is encouraging and invigorating. My energy towards sustainability and thinking about ways to further enhance my own work never faltered. As we exit 2006 and enter 2007, I can only hope that the sustainability movement gains even more momentum. This momentum, in part, will be widely due to the efforts of people like Sean, myself, and you.

Tear Goose

Q13 Fox, in reporting a very serious standoff in Snohomish County tonight, captioned a portion of the news story stating that the police used “tear goose” to subdue the subject.

An inquiry into the government’s usage of secret geese training programs shall begin shortly.

Sustainability and Travel

Road going off into the distanceRecently, I had the opportunity to take a vacation in the form of a road trip from Olympia, WA to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks in Wyoming. While traveling, I had several chances to think about sustainability and how action on trips can help to reduce the impact of your travels.

When traveling, of course, you’re basically required to expend more in the form of energy than you would otherwise, whether that’s gasoline in your car (or the plane you fly on), the energy expended to check into a hotel, use their resources, and check out, or the energy to simply pack your bag and leave in the first place. Inevitably, you increase your footprint in the world, at least temporarily. So what can you do to help negate that increased footprint?

It seems unreasonable to simply say “don’t ever travel anywhere for any reason, since it results in more waste and energy expended”. Instead, here are some suggestions:

  • If you intend to stay longer than a single night in any one hotel, keep the “do not disturb” sign on your door. This stops housekeeping from cleaning your room daily – you can always reuse towels and sleep on the same sheets. You’re saving some small amount of water and electricity by not needing clean linens daily.
  • Recycle when recycling is available. If it’s not available and it’s practical to do so, carry recyclables with you until you find someplace that does recycle.
  • Pick lodgings that are dedicated to reducing their own footprint through internal sustainability programs. Quite a few of these establishments now exist – you just have to look for them.
  • Consider purchasing a carbon offset for your trip. Expedia has now partnered with TerraPass to offer these offsets when Expedia users purchase plane tickets. There are, of course, many other offset services and sustainability charities worthy of a donation to help compensate for your increased footprint.