Category Archives: Environmental News

This is Why You Conserve

Very interesting post on Workerette today on just how important water conservation is. She spotted two articles that I think are very important to read.

wasted water

The first is about a town in Tennessee that is out of water. The water is turned on in the town for just 3 hours a day. As you can imagine, those are 3 hectic hours.

The second is about the Georgia Aquarium, which is having to drain tanks because there is so little water available, and everyone is having to do what they can to cut way, way back on their water consumption.

These are issues that many states in the southeastern United States are dealing with. I won’t be surprised to see similar problems in a lot more states, and I am fully aware that southern California is reliant on other areas for water.

The suggestions for conserving water on the Workerette site are good. I do a lot of them already, although some aren’t possible for a renter. No choice about my washing machine, for example. But I do at least wash full loads whenever possible. And while the kids do still prefer baths, they take them together.

But I also like to think about outdoor water use. I don’t keep a perfectly green lawn. I do keep a vegetable garden, but that of course has benefits that I won’t trade for a lower water bill, and something would need to replace the garden anyhow.

We water the lawn just enough to keep it pleasant for the kids. It’s not that perfect green; doesn’t need to be. I scolded my husband for rinsing ash from the fires off our walkway rather than just sweeping them. Thought he’d know better by now….

We compost food waste. This may not seem like a water saver, but if you compare it to the practice of putting it down the garbage disposal in the sink, it can save some significant water. And of course it’s much better than throwing it in the trash, when you’re not thinking in water terms.

I have one kind of funny way to save water in the kitchen that only works on warm days. If I need hot water, I turn on the cold side. The reason for this is that our pipes must run under cement or something, because if the day is even a little warm the initial burst of water in the kitchen sink quickly turns hot. Scalding hot if the day is hot. I’ve seen steam. It’s annoying if I want cool water, but nice when warm is needed.

I don’t know how soon more communities will be facing severe water shortages, but it’s something we all need to consider and prepare for. The better we get at being efficient with our water use the easier it will be to adapt when there is no choice but to use less water.

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Thinking on the Impact of the California Wildfires

It’s taken me a few days back home to really get back into the blogging groove. I was fortunate enough to have my mother’s house to evacuate to, but living in a house with 11 other people is not exactly what I would call restful. Add in a rather large number of dogs, and things were pretty crazy over there.

ashes came in under the door

But things are calmer now in my area. My home did not burn. My sister’s home did not burn, although the fire came very, very close. My in-laws home did not burn. My mother’s home didn’t even get an advisory evacuation because it was so far from the flames, thank goodness. We were all extremely fortunate.

But of course the air has been simply terrible, so bad the kids aren’t supposed to play outside. And I now know a lot about where my house leaks – that’s where the ash came in. The front door leak was no surprise, and seeing which windows leaked more or less was educational.

But of course the environmental impact is there. The ashes contain whatever chemicals were in the homes that burned. You know how bad that can be. And if this post on Green Options has it right, this could be something of a cycle building, due to global warming.

I know a lot of people have trouble associating global warming with increased risk of fires. It’s not that things get warmer that causes the fires, folks. It’s that the cycles of drought and rain become more extreme. More brush grows when it’s wet, and it gets drier and drier, easier to burn as droughts extend. Hence, more large fires when fires happen.

We’ve been in quite a drought of late. They were already talking about conserving water supplies and how we’ve been tapping into reserves before this; I fully expect this talk to get very serious now, especially if we have yet another dry winter. That will probably be another impact of the fires. I’ve been wondering how much of our water supply was used up fighting it.

One of my hopes is that more homeowners will think about what they plant after this. In a place like this, drought resistant plants are a must. If it’s not too easily burned, so much the better. There are plenty of plants that do grow pretty well out here without constant watering. Some are quite pretty.

Now I’m just sitting indoors at home, hoping that the spot showers that have happened elsewhere will happen in more places (especially anyplace still burning) and help to clean the air a little. I really do look forward to being able to let my kids play outside freely again. You know how crazy kids get when they’ve been mostly cooped up.

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Is Your State Green?

I’ve seen a bit of talk around other green blogs on the new report in Forbes Magazine on which states are green. California, where I live, had rather disappointing results, being at #14.

They used six criteria, including carbon emissions per capita, air quality, water quality and policies.

The results can be surprising. The states that are greenest are not necessarily the ones you would expect. Oregon and Washington being in the top 3 is scarcely a surprise from what I know of those states. But Vermont came out #1. Even New Jersey and New York came out greener than California, which is certainly not how people think of those states.

California took big hits on air quality due to certain areas having relatively poor air quality, despite that California on the whole has great policies for the environment.

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Are Bumblebees Vanishing?

There’s a somewhat disturbing report on Discovery on how bumblebees appear to be vanishing. People don’t pay nearly as much attention to them as they do to honeybees, which we already know have been in trouble.

bumblebee

Reading this article made me think. I haven’t seen bumblebees much lately in my area. They were never so common as honeybees, but they weren’t rare.

From the article:

But if bumblebees were to disappear, farmers and entomologists warn, the consequences would be huge, especially coming on top of the problems with honeybees, which are active at different times and on different crop species.

Bumblebees are responsible for pollinating an estimated 15 percent of all the crops grown in the U.S., worth $3 billion, particularly those raised in greenhouses. Those include tomatoes, peppers and strawberries.

As more of these problems show up it becomes all the more clear that we need to pay attention to what is happening in the natural world. Pollinators are one of the most vital links in the entire food chain no matter what it is you like to eat.

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National Public Lands Day

I love the idea of this and wish I could take part, but it’s definitely the wrong time for me. National Public Lands Day takes place the last Saturday of every September. For me, the lack of participation comes down to other obligations and lack of transportation.

The other obligation amounts to dog-sitting my mother’s dog, a complete stress case if she’s left alone. The dog is a complete sweetheart, but is so distressed when left alone that she gets destructive.

The lack of transportation comes down to the usual thing of being in a one-car family. There are a lot of things I can’t easily do.

But for those of you who can, this is a really great idea. Participants go and help care for our public lands. From the site:

Volunteers will build bridges and trails, improve habitat for wildlife, plant trees, remove invasive plants that threaten fragile natives, protected natural, historic and cultural resources—and much more. Volunteers will work in parks and forests, at rivers, lakes, and wetlands, at cultural and historic sites and in their own neighborhoods.

There are a lot of opportunities to participate here in California, including some which would in other years be reasonable for me to participate in, which doesn’t really come as a surprise. Big state with plenty of public lands.

Anyone planning on participating?

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