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We recently spoke with Babs Adamski, the Community Outreach Coordinator for Be Cart Smart (your new curbside collection service). For those of you reading from Portland, Oregon, consider joining the Include the Food campaign and raise funds for your community organization along the way.
What: The Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (BPS) invites neighborhood associations, nonprofit groups, ethnic groups, and communities of faith to mobilize volunteers to go door-to-door to answer questions about changes to the curbside collection system, to promote composting and to earn money for the group.
Why: Just like when Portlanders first started recycling, it takes time to create and establish new routines for households.
Portlanders are doing a great job adapting to the new Curbside Collection Service with food scrap composting and the change to weekly pick up of the green Portland Composts! roll cart and every-other-week garbage collection. The City wants to continue to help Portlanders adapt and to answer questions about the changes.
How: Participating groups commit to mobilizing volunteers ages 18 years and older. BPS provides training, safety vests, maps, walking lists and literature. Volunteers earn $2.00 per conversation or $.50 per piece left behind for their organizations.
Any group providing five or more volunteers is welcome.
When: February 28 – May 19, 2012
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays (evenings), Saturdays; Groups pick days and times for the training and to canvass together.
Where: Target neighborhoods include St. Johns, Woodlawn, King, Concordia, Cully, Centennial, Lents, Powellhurst-Gilbert, Brentwood Darlington and Woodstock.
Ready to jump in? Contact Babs Adamski, 503-823-8753, barbara.adamski@portlandoregon.gov or Renée Johnson, 503-823-1862, renee.johnson@portlandoregon.gov
Thanks to our friends at Practically Green for sharing this story about two friends (Randi and Janet) choosing an ‘eat local challenge’ in Boise, Idaho! Below is an excerpt from an interview posted on Practically Green’s blog:
Practically Green: How did you ever decide to do this?
Randi: Janet and I had lunch in early December. We got the idea to develop a personal challenge for 2012 and support each other. I’d just completed a class at Northwest Earth Institute called World of Health: Connecting People, Place, and Planet, so I was in a sustainable frame of mind… I wanted to do something to appreciate where food comes from, something that would be healthy for me, my family, and the environment. I was questioning excessive packaging and what really was available from local sources. I wanted to now begin to answer those questions, and better understand what was available organically, locally, especially this time of the year.
Janet: It’s one thing to eat local in Boise during the gardening season – and Randi and I both have vegetable gardens. But in the dead of winter? We decided to try it at an intense level for the month of January…
PG: Any a-Ha moments?
Randi: One tip, set aside time on Sunday afternoon and cook for the week. Potatoes, legumes, hearty soups and stews.
Janet: Before the January challenge, I didn’t really enjoy cooking or planning meals. When we initially discussed the challenge in December, my hands were sweating at the thought of doing this challenge. I knew I needed to develop healthier habits around food, but prioritizing the time and making it happen seemed like a big undertaking. But to my surprise, there are many local options to choose from in Idaho. The transition was much easier than I anticipated and I actually do enjoy planning meals and cooking now. I also find I’m not wasting food (at the end of the week) by adopting easy strategies and investing this time. These are habits I’m carrying forward past January.
Randi: I was amazed at how wonderful this was from a community perspective. Everyone at our local farmer’s markets was so helpful, supportive and interested in what Janet and I were doing. Not only was it eye-opening and fun to discover the variety of delicious local food sources, it was enriching to meet the people behind them all. These connections and relationships will be ongoing. The other thing “that’s next” for me is to learn how to can, freeze, and preserve all the bounty from my husband’s organic garden this summer and fall… so we can enjoy during the winter months next year.
Janet: My family drinks a lot of milk. I calculated: we consume an average of 140 or 150 gallons a year. I recycle the plastic jugs, but one of my goals in doing this challenge is to also reduce the amount I’m recycling and focus on “pre-cycling,” i.e., eliminate the demand on resources before I use them. I’ve transitioned to now local milk bottle exchange and I have completely eliminated the need to recycle the plastic. It was so easy to make the transition and it’s another outcome I’ll continue moving forward too…
Read more on the Practically Green Blog, where you can find tips on eating locally, and see a list of winter foods recipes.
One of NWEI’s long time volunteers, Betty Shelley, will be offering a “Reduce Your Waste, Reduce Your Impact” class beginning Tuesday February 7th – hosted at the NWEI office in Portland. Alarmingly, since 1900 the US population has tripled but use of materials has increased 17-fold (from David Wann’s Simple Prosperity). If you would like to reduce your waste and lessen your impact on the planet, this class is for you! Below is information from Betty regarding the class:
I will be offering my three-session “Reduce Your Waste, Reduce Your Impact” class this winter at the Northwest Earth Institute office beginning Tuesday, February 7th from 6:30 to 8:30pm. The class will deal with solid waste, aka garbage, but will also touch on reducing water, energy, and other resource use. The format is interactive with the goal of engaging participants through discussion and assignments to explore their actions and behaviors, and learn ways to make lasting changes. Learn my techniques and share your own.
*To sign up for the class, either email or call no later than January 31st. The number of participants needed is a minimum of eight and a maximum of twelve. The class will be cancelled if fewer than eight sign up. The $25 fee (cash only) is due in full at the first meeting.
Please share this with anyone you know who is interested in making a commitment to reducing their impact.
Betty Shelley 503-244-8044 greenhouseone@gmail.com
“It was great to talk to other people about their efforts to reduce, reuse and recycle. Just going to the class made me feel great and inspired to take more action.” Barbara
“Even knowing as much as I know, I still learned quite a bit that I take and use at home and in my business.” Lane’
“The activities and lecture portions were just short enough to keep people interested. The small tips had the best impact for me.” Jessica
Download the class flyer here: BettyShelleyWasteReductionClass
Thanks to the Center for a New American Dream for sharing this inspiring video!
In this short animation, psychologist Tim Kasser discusses how America’s culture of consumerism undermines our well-being. When people buy into the ever-present marketing messages that “the good life” is “the goods life,” they not only use up Earth’s limited resources, but they are less happy and less inclined toward helping others.
The animation both lays out the problems of excess materialism and points toward solutions that promise a healthier, more just, and more sustainable life.
While searching for some ideas on how to have a more eco-friendly Thanksgiving this year, I came across this post just published this week on tips for a locally sourced holiday meal from Chef Bryant Terry, cookbook author and food justice activist. He’s written Vegan Soul Kitchen: Fresh, Healthy, and Creative African-American Cuisine and Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen, and is passionate about food, particularly the availability of food for all. Read on for a few tips:
Focus on locally-grown, seasonable produce
Eating locally and seasonally could mean your usual Thanksgiving recipes needs an update. Chef Bryant says, “Plan your Thanksgiving menu around local, seasonal and sustainable produce growing in your area, and create new family traditions — incorporating into your meal original recipes that celebrate your cultural foodways and use local produce and value-added food products.”
Visit the farmers market
Chef Bryant emphasizes that as consumers, we play a vital role in ensuring the survival of small farmers. “If you can’t harvest food from your home or community garden, buy fresh produce from a local farmers market or food co-op,” the sustainable chef suggests. “Check localharvest.org to find farmers markets, family farms and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area.”
Use the foods you have
Before you run to the grocery store for Thanksgiving ingredients, consider using what you have on-hand. “Even if it is hard to grow food where you live in November, it is typically easy to grow herbs in a kitchen windowsill,” recommends Chef Bryant. “Also, incorporate fruits and vegetables preserved from the summer and fall.”
Drink locally
“If you plan to serve alcoholic drinks, buy local (preferably organic) wine and beer,” encourages Chef Bryant. “In addition to supporting a healthier environment by minimizing fossil fuel use associated with shipping, supporting small businesses helps ensure communities thrive economically.” The chef also recommends serving homemade kombucha for teetotalers.
Go a’picking
Whether you do it before Thanksgiving or as part of the post-feast activities, Chef Bryant recommends planning an apple-picking trip with family and friends. If there are orchards nearby, then use your harvest to make locally-sourced holiday dishes. “Make homemade Apple-Cranberry Sauce using fresh cranberries and locally grown apples,” the chef adds. “You can even make hard apple cider or Cinnamon-Apple Jack Toddies from your bounty.”
Minimize food waste
Plan your Thanksgiving meal before rampantly buying ingredients to avoid throwing unused food away. In addition, Chef Bryant suggests getting the most out of the food you buy. “For example, if cooking pumpkins or other winter squash for your meal, roast the seeds — they can be eaten as a snack or used as a garnish for soups or stews,” he explains.
Ditch the disposable dinnerware
Though paper napkins and plastic dinnerware are convenient and require little clean-up, they also contribute to waste. “Instead, buy cloth napkins from a local flea market or even make your own,” says Chef Bryant. “Also, buy your plates, bowls and serving platters from local artisans. Besides adding unique dinnerware with unusual designs to your collection, you are putting money in the pockets of independent craftspeople.”
Share your Thanksgiving
Give thanks by giving others a reason for Thanksgiving. “In the spirit of Thanksgiving, share your bounty (both ingredients and finished dishes) with friends, family and community,” concludes Chef Bryant…
For the whole post, click here.
And, HAPPY THANKSGIVING from all of us at NWEI!
This month in the Sequim Gazette (Washington), columnist Beverly Hoffman posed a challenge about shifting our thinking and educating ourselves in order to create the changes we wish to see. She reminds us that Fall and Winter are times to come inside, slow down and gather with friends, family and co-workers in the spirit of educating ourselves more deeply as times change. We hope you’ll host others for an NWEI course this season, too! Read Beverly’s article below:
As I talk with my friends, it seems that many of us have shifted our thinking toward a greater consciousness. Like the Joads in Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” who, in the Great Depression, had to leave their Dust Bowl Oklahoma land and drive to California in hopes for something better, we know things are changing. And how we respond to those changes might define us, as individuals as well as a country.
At least three ideas seem to be intersecting right now — a sluggish economy with food prices getting higher, a wish to eat healthy food and a growing sense of the need to reduce our carbon footprint on earth. Many of us are thinking about a first-time garden or how to increase the size or productivity of existing gardens. I was at a friend’s house the other day and she was showing me how they planned to change a perennial bed into a raised bed where they could grow vegetables and include a hot frame. Another friend is experimenting with hydroponic (no soil) production. I also saw a class on hydroponics recently advertised. Another friend showed me a small second-year garden where she or her husband gather vegetables each evening for a stir-fry.
In Port Townsend this past month, the Northwest Earth Institute sponsored a weekend conference with Will Allen as the keynote speaker. Allen, the son of sharecroppers, who became a professional basketball player and later worked for Proctor and Gamble, shared hundreds of slides of how he has transformed cultivation practices, using raised beds, composting, aquaculture and vermiculture (composting utilizing worms). He is undeterred about his vision and feels he’s in the infancy stage of his wish for the entire world to have access to good food. He composts on a huge scale to create a rich soil — his answer to growing healthy crops. Then he transforms any offered space — asphalt-covered parking lots or an area where there is infertile soil — by heaping his composted soil on top. He teaches people how and when to plant, how to harvest and how to sell at local farmers markets or to restaurants and school cafeterias. He constantly is learning and experimenting. One idea I loved was his wish to build a five-story structured greenhouse of sorts with an institutional kitchen inside where people could learn to can, dehydrate and freeze crops.
On another weekend I again went to Port Townsend for its Film Festival and saw two movies on alternative gardening. One was about a man who created a garden in the back of his truck, adding a vapor barrier and rich soil. He literally was a gardener on the move, selling his herbs and produce around the city. Another film showed a gardener who was growing rows of produce atop New York buildings. He had to have an engineer figure out the amount of stress a roof with wet soil could handle and then with that knowledge, he laid out beds and was able to produce an abundance of food. Another lady, who lived in a city high-rise with lots of windows in the foyer, experimented with hanging gardens made of suspended plastic gallon bottles tied together and attached to a horizontal PVC pipe with holes punched in the bottom, that was the water source trough. Below the hanging plastic bottles tied to one another, another PVC collected the dripping water and pumped it back up to the feeder pipe.
People are thinking. And creating. And experimenting. And are problem solving. Like the Christ-figure Jim Casy in “The Grapes of Wrath,” many are recognizing that “we” is far more important than “I” and are trying to build communities where people work together and where Mother Earth is protected and honored. Recently I was at a lovely apple orchard party where the hostess invited her guests to pick apples to take home. She also had a cider press where guests filled containers with fresh apple juice. Even the pulp was saved … for a lady to take home to her chickens. While there, I went into the greenhouse and tasted tomatoes right off the vine. So sweet. So juicy. The entire afternoon was a celebration of the harvest and of good friends taking the time to be together sharing a potluck meal.
Times are changing. We might want to visit the Northwest Earth Institute website (www.nwei.org) and look at the courses they offer. During this fall and winter, as our lives slow down a bit, we might want to host a group of like-minded friends to study one of their books, such as “Voluntary Simplicity,” “Menu for the Future,” “Healthy Child, Healthy Planet,” etc. Each book is about $21. At the talk by Will Allen, we all were encouraged to find a way to plant something to eat in our surrounding gardens around our homes. We were challenged to educate ourselves more deeply as times are changing.
I pass on the challenge to you.
For the full article, click here.
As you know, NWEI staff, board, volunteers and hundreds of individuals and organizations throughout North America are gearing up for the two week EcoChallenge starting on Saturday October 1st! Bill Gerlach has been blogging about his 125 Mile Local Food Challenge. Below is an excerpt. For the full post, please click here.
Every once in a while you have to put what you believe in to the test. And for those who have been reading TNP (The Next Pursuit) for a while or know me “off screen”, you know that I’m a huge supporter of the local food movement as a vehicle for building community, local economies and sustainable living. So with that backdrop, I’m excited to launch this new series of posts chronicling our family’s participation in the 2011 EcoChallenge sponsored by the Northwest Earth Institute.
The annual Challenge allows individuals and groups to identify areas in their life where they can make positive changes that benefit them, their communities and the environment as a whole. Participants can choose the area(s) that best fit with their situation, including water conservation, energy efficiency, sustainable food options, alternative transportation and trash reduction. After a quick sign up — which allows you to participate as an individual or team — you are up and running. I am doubly-excited because NWEI has asked me to be a feature blogger for this year’s Challenge, sharing posts and updates with the entire NWEI community.
Our challenge is straightforward: For the two week period of October 1 through October 15, eat and drink only what is grown and/or produced within a 125-mile radius of our home in Rhode Island.
While straightforward, this challenge is far from simple. Though the local and regional food infrastructure has been built up in recent years, it is far from complete — as is evidenced by our research and planning. Our particular challenge is also complicated by the fact that our family of five is vegetarian, has three young children running around and geographically speaking, we are headed into the tail end of the primary growing season.
Measuring Our Progress
In thinking about how we’ll “score” our progress, we’ve decided that we will “grade” our food consumption by where it falls on this very non-scientific scale:
- Tier ONE — Food (or ingredients) is grown and produced within 125 miles (e.g., vegetables, milk, flour)
- Tier TWO — Food (or ingredients) is grown outside the 125 mile radius but produced within the 125 radius (e.g., our favorite local brew)
- Tier THREE — Food is grown/produced outside the 125 mile radius (e.g., well, we’ll have to see)
In chronicling our efforts, we believe we can help shed some light on both the great work that has been in play to create local/regional food systems as well as identify the gaps when it comes to the practicality of trying to eat locally/regionally. Think about it: If something were to happen overnight that rendered cheap energy and the ability to ship in food (raw, processed or otherwise) from hundreds or thousands of miles away obsolete, would your local food system be able to support its surrounding population? For the vast majority of us, I am going to say ‘no’. In a very small way, participating in this Challenge will help me bring some real-world experience to the table — literally and figuratively — allowing me to help spur the right kind of system growth.
It’s All About Planning
Since deciding to participate in the Challenge, we have been doing our homework and figuring out what we’ll eat and where we’ll buy the food/ingredients. Truth be told, my wife, Sara, has been doing the heavy lifting in this department — mapping out our eventual menus, trips and budgets. Here in Rhode Island, we’re fortunate to have a great non-profit called Farm Fresh RI. Their maps and databases of locally-grown and produced food have been a big asset. When we’ve emailed them with questions about hard to find things like flour, grains and beans, their staff have been extremely helpful.
We plan to take this as granular as possible — all three meals, beverages, snacks, treats, etc. So that means I’ll be foregoing things like coffee, tea and chocolate (thank goodness for our local dairy farm, brewery and winery!). Beyond that, we’ve had to have discussions around just how far to take this: Do we not use base ingredients like sugar and salt (we think we have flour covered so Sara can make her breads)? What about other spices and herbs we can get fresh? Can apple cider (it’s apple season here) make it as an orange juice substitute?
And then there are the kids. Three strapping youngsters who (fortunately) are very open to pretty much anything you put in front of them. As an adult, you could probably tolerate eating greens and hefty salads three nights in a row. I’m not sure about the kids. We’ll have to see. (Full disclosure: Writing those last few sentences makes me extremely sensitive to the reality that so many kids here in the U.S. and across the globe are food insecure and I’m sure would not bat an eye at having fresh greens three nights in a row. I feel extremely fortunate that we are in a position to even take on this “challenge” when so many are challenged just to survive.)
Haven’t signed up yet for your EcoChallenge? You can do so here: www.ecochallenge.org!
Day three of our North American Gathering took place on Saturday, September 17th. We were honored to have Will Allen join us on Saturday, and thank Shelly Randall for blogging about his keynote speech.
He came, he saw, he loved our farmers market!
“Genius” farmer Will Allen of Milwaukee, Wis. (he’s only the second farmer to have been awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant), made a very special visit to Port Townsend Saturday to be the keynote speaker on on Day 3 of the Northwest Earth Institute conference.
The “good food revolution” founder‘s schedule was booked: first with an interview on KPTZ and then back-to-back Q&A sessions with a group of 20 young people interested in food activism, then with 65 local farmers—sandwiched around lunch at the Port Townsend Farmers Market. (He had a Bavarian bratwurst, with mayo, in case you’re wondering.)
The 500 people who filled McCurdy Pavilion at Fort Worden to hear his evening talk were delighted to hear Will compliment our beloved market.
“You guys are fortunate to have one of the best farmers markets I’ve seen—and I’ve visited almost every city in America!” Will said to enthusiastic applause.
Click here to visit Shelly’s blog to read the rest of this post.
Following is another guest post by our conference blogger, Shelly Randall. Visit Shelly’s website at www.sustainabletogether.com.
If not me, then who?
It’s the conference theme and the rhetorical question we are all grappling with at the Northwest Earth Institute’s North American gathering at Fort Worden State Park here in Port Townsend. If we don’t step up to take action, how can we expect others to?
On Day 2, the first full day of the conference, we heard several inspiring stories from leaders who have stepped up to build coalitions around local food, to facilitate local investing opportunities, to create a lifestyle change action guide, and more.
Participants are appreciating the level of detail shared on how to replicate these actions in other communities. “A good mix of pragmatism and idealism,” was one comment. “The best feet-on-the-ground presentation I’ve seen,” was another. Snooze-inducing Powerpoint presentations these are not!
I plan to write detailed posts about the presentations I attended in the weeks to come, especially the success stories from Port Townsend: using NWEI Menu for the Future discussion groups to bring farmers and local-food customers together; and growing community capital with a membership group called LION (Local Investing Opportunities Network).
Right now it’s past midnight, and my head is swimming with “feelings of excitement, interest, intrigue, befuddlement,” as presenter/attendee Kurt Hoelting described it at the end of this long and mind-bending day.
But before I hit the sack, I want to share Kurt’s original and heartfelt response to the question, “If not me, then who?”
“It’s exactly the question that sent me on this journey. And it’s probably the most important question I live with every day,“ he said at the start of his keynote talk on how he chose to take personal responsibility for his role in global warming.
Kurt, a wilderness guide and meditation teacher who traveled all over the world for business and pleasure, decided to dramatically reduce his carbon footprint by giving up jet and auto travel for one year. He wrote a book about his 2008 adventure called The Circumference of Home: One Man’s Yearlong Quest for a Radically Local Life.
For that one year he decided to travel only within 100 kilometers of his South Whidbey home, within a circle that encompasses the stunningly beautiful Puget Sound basin. Tonight we enjoyed a slide show of images from his walking, biking and paddling trips, and considered his advice for avoiding despair or denial over the state of the world: “The question is not do we respond, but can we turn it into an adventure?”
Kurt asked us to tell the person sitting next to us the boldest thing we could imagine doing to address the current environmental crisis. Then he urged us to consider actually doing it.
“The invitation I leave you with is to really ‘up the ante.’ To dare one another, in a way, to move in the direction of something bold. Something that begins to match the scale of the challenge we face.”
What’s the boldest action you can imagine taking to move yourself or your community to greater sustainability? Leave a comment if you want to share.
After all, if not you, then who?
Many thanks to Shelly Randall, our conference blogger, for providing the following summary of Day One of the our North American Gathering. Visit Shelly’s Blog, Sustainable Together, at www.sustainabletogether.com.
“We are the ones / We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” was the hopeful message raised in song at tonight’s opening event of the Northwest Earth Institute’s North American gathering in Port Townsend.
Some of the voices were a little off-key, but we just looked at each other, shrugged, smiled, and kept singing.
Not many conferences kick off with rounds and layer songs, but this isn’t just any conference, and the attendees are not exactly shrinking violets. They are bold and innovative environmental activists. They are agitators for change in their communities. They are passionate people with causes–and they are pretty good vocalists, as a whole!
Presenter Gretchen Sleicher (stepping in for Pam Wood, who was unable to present at the last minute) gave a program on “The Great Turning,” which she described as “the adventure of moving toward a life-sustaining civilization”—in opposition to the “the idea that we can keep going and going on a finite planet.”
Using call-and-response, Gretchen taught us songs to illustrate the four “points of the spiral”—Gratitude, Honoring Our Pain for the World, Seeing With New Eyes, and Going Forth. She wrote some of the songs herself, and has collected others from around the world. The words and MP3 files with the melodies are available at songsforthegreatturning.net.
“Songs metabolize human emotion,” Gretchen told us. She is passionate about the power of music to enliven and inspire: here in Port Townsend she co-directs the PT Songlines choir and she leads workshops around the region that combine group singing and Joanna Macy’s The Work That Reconnects.
Judging by the wholehearted participation of the conference’s early arrivals (50 so far, more to come in the morning) and the positive vibrations ringing in the room, the singing was a great icebreaker. We also paired up to do some get-to-kn0w-each-other exercises where we alternated between active listening and sharing our thoughts on topics such as, “Some things that are concerning to me in this moment of planetary crisis are…”
Serious stuff.
“We don’t know if this great turning is happening at the same time as this great unraveling,” Gretchen said. “But if we knew, would it [this global challenge] elicit our greatest creativity? It is a blessing to be alive at this time and not know.”
If you are a NW Natural gas customer, please keep reading. If not, feel free to skip the rest of this friendly message.
NW Natural is running a promotional campaign to enlist customers in paperless billing–which is great in and of itself because it’s less mail for you to deal with and less paper making its way into the recycling bin. But to make things even more exciting, they are offering $25,000 to a small group of local nonprofits–every paperless billing customer gets to vote for the organization of their choice. This is where you come in–NWEI is one of the four nonprofits who will benefit from the campaign, and we need your votes.
If you are already a paperless customer, that’s great–just log in to your account and then vote (this link takes you straight to the campaign webpage too). If you are not already a subscriber, follow the link and enroll today to cast your vote.
This is an easy way to support NWEI, and reduce the clutter on your kitchen counter in the process. To sweeten the deal, we’re also raffling off a copy of the newly revised Voluntary Simplicity book and a $25 Portland Nursery gift card–just email us (staff at nwei dot org) and let us know you voted and we’ll enter you into the raffle. The campaign runs through June 30, 2011 but don’t delay- cast your vote today.
2011 350 HOME & GARDEN CHALLENGE: *Go Grey* from TINBIKE on Vimeo.
As you may have seen on our blog last week, NWEI is partnering with Transition US and 350.org to get people involved in this weekend’s Home and Garden Challenge!
Already, over 700 people around the US are signed up to take action in their communities. Organizing a Home & Garden Challenge in your town (or city, village, county, parish, island) not only helps raise awareness and continue to build local resiliency, it offers an opportunity for citizens to be a part of something much larger. This is the perfect opportunity for communities across the country to come together on a single weekend and show their solidarity.
Let’s get some NWEI folks on the map! Learn more about signing up and taking action here.
Today we have a guest blogger writing on her experiences with NWEI courses! Course participant Sheilah Toomey recently participated in NWEI’s A World of Health discussion course. She was raised in Portland, Oregon and on a farm in Sherwood, Oregon. She is currently retired, age 70, and “watching her budget carefully – especially now that I have committed to buying more local and organic food!” Here are some of her reflections from her recent discussion course:
“Since taking part in recent discussions focused on A World of Health: Connecting People, Place and Planet, I have immediately made lifestyle changes in the areas of what I eat, where I live and what I use for personal care. I’ve researched all my cosmetics, and thrown away almost all the toxic ones. I’ve put a lady-bug sign on my lawn that says “Pesticide Free Zone” and have committed to non-toxic lawn care. I’ve gone back to using just plain washing soda and vinegar for most cleaning.
The course has also reinforced some ongoing habits. I continue to drive less and consolidate errands, which I’ve been doing for years. I also continue to ride my bike to the grocery store for a “few things” in the summer and fall.
In the area of food, I’ve begun to buy mostly organic produce (and have tried to keep calm as I see the total at the cash register). I also subscribed this spring to a vegetable program through a local CSA. I stored away all my nice plastic containers and bought glass containers and waxed paper sandwich bags for leftovers (so, what do I do with 2 new rolls of plastic wrap?). I’m working on engaging community members in making change, and spoke to managers of my two Trader Joe’s about providing tomatoes in glass jars (but am also finding that fresh tomatoes actually make a pretty good spaghetti sauce!). I also recycled the plastic water bottle I keep in my car, and replaced it with stainless steel.
As I write this, I still have two chapters left in the course book. I am afraid to look ahead but look forward to continued changes towards a healthier world.”
Hot off the heels of our April Month of Action, we’re diving into offering a new version of Voluntary Simplicity as well as partnering with Transition US and 350.org to encourage you to join the 350 Home and Garden Challenge!
What is the Home and Garden Challenge?
You as an individual can identify specific actions in one or more of the four challenge areas: food, water, energy and/or community or volunteer on a community project. All we ask is that you register your action so we can show the world just how powerful we are as a movement then check out the Actions Map to see who else is taking on the challenge.
As Trathen Heckman of the Transition US movement wrote in a recent blog post: On a single weekend, May 14th & 15th, thousands of us will take to the streets, the garden, schoolyard, home, apartment and city hall to take action as part of the 350 Home & Garden Challenge…A multitude of organizations across the country will transform, retrofit and revitalize our landscapes and homes to grow food, conserve water, save energy and build community. And we need YOU to join us. Stand up and be counted, inspire your family, friends and neighbors to do the same. Amidst a dizzying array of crises and mounting despair, together with our heads, hearts and hands aligned in action we will bring the hope of this historic transition as we descend from peak everything to community resilience.
There is a freedom in belonging to something bigger than ourselves, when we feel apart of, not a part from things. And it comes bundled with hope. Not a blind, ungrounded faith that things will just work out. It’s hope as a purposefully engaged state of being, in spite of, even inspired by the state of things and a need to live and love with conviction.
These times ask for more from us. They ask for us to rise and shine like spring’s verdant emergence, an unstoppable force of nature.
Here’s to collaboration and to gardening for change!
Here are some resources to help you get started. Register now as May 14th is fast approaching!
Ryan Harper
Deborah McNamara
Kerry Lyles
Mike Mercer
Lacy Cagle
Carolyn White
Rob Nathan
