Happy Earth Day

Earth Day is a great time to make a lasting change in our lives. We can use less energy, reduce pollution, resolve to vote for officials who have green voting records, contribute funds to worthwhile organizations, and even take steps to make our own properties less of a problem for the local ecosystem. Jill and I are planning to install a porous driveway and patio using interlocking stones and to convert a large portion of the property to "natural" area, in order to reduce the amount of mowing and to better control runoff. We have checked into solar panels and are probably going to go for it next year. The state of Washington offers tax breaks for homeowners who install solar panels from in-state manufacturers.

The city of Seattle is known for it's progressive legislation, which can lead to much-needed reforms as often as well-meaning debacles. In regards to trash collection, they have provided homeowners with 4 different choices of trash container sizes. There are penalties for having a large proportion of recyclables in your trash. That's the stick; the carrot is the difference in cost to recycle versus waste disposal: a large bag of garbage costs around $6, the same volume of recycling costs a little over $3, and it's just over $2 for yard waste/composting pickup.

We have a large trash roller bin, a large yard waste roller bin, a paper/cans/plastic recycling roller bin, and a smaller recycling bin for bottles. Food waste, excepting meats and dairy, can go into the yard waste bin, which is sent to a composting yard. As I've said before, I don't mind this kind of trash policing, although it forces you to make a trip to the dump if you have an excess of trash. We had about 15 bags of styrofoam packing board from furniture purchases, and it would have been quite expensive to leave them out by the trash cans. It cost me 30 minutes and $10 to take them to the transfer station myself.

In most household trash, about 1/3 is compostable table scraps, including coffee grounds, all veggie scraps, nuts, eggshells, and cereals, such as rice. We've noticed a huge reduction in our weekly trash output since we started separating out these items. We're going to get a composting tumbler for the yard sometime soon, instead of sending our scraps off to the city.

Our countertop composter


Get out there and be a hero!