Recycling tidbits: styrofoam, gable top milk cartons & aseptic boxes

The latest Master Recycler newsletter hit my inbox yesterday, and while I'm not going to list all of the new materials that Portlanders will be able to recycle curbside when the new rollcarts are distributed (don't want to create any confusion) I do want to share one bit of good news:

We will still be able to recycle gable-top milk cartons AND aseptic boxes (chicken stocks, juice boxes, etc.) curbside. Yippee!

Some more good news is that Portland once again has a styrofoam recycler! PLC Recycling in N. Portland will accept clean styrofoam blocks, cups and trays for FREE. 4404 N. Suttle Road, Portland, 503-285-8777. Drop-off hours: 6am - 6pm.

Donating household items

Christina is looking for a place to donate household items:

Is there a local donation place I can take household items like bathmats, shower curtains, etc... I just cleaned out my linen closet.  I will take my childrens items to NW Children's Outreach, but want to take other items to somewhere other than Goodwill.

We recommend Community Warehouse (2267 N. Interstate Ave.) for donations of household goods. They work directly with social service agencies and provide free household goods to local families getting back on their feet when fleeing domestic violence or recovering from substance abuse, etc. They do not profit from their donations, nor do they export anything.

Let me also link to Heather's great post about local non-profits that take donations of items for reuse.

Two GreenGroup meetings next week

The SW GreenGroup will meet next week on Friday, February 8, at 10:30am at the SWCC.

The Eastside GreenGroup will also meet next week on Friday, February 8 at 10:30am at the Urban Grind NE.

If you are new to our groups, drop us an email to get directions and let us know you'd like to attend!

A trip to Habitat for Humanity's ReStore

I'm finally getting around to 'decorating' my 3-year old son's bedroom. Up until last week his chamber was looking pretty bleak: a mattress and box spring on the floor, an old rocker and a beat-up Dania bookcase. Poor guy. But after all, he is number two, so he'd better get used to it. :-) It would be really easy to go to IKEA and buy all new stuff, but I'm trying to temper my instant gratification urges by shopping some local second-hand stores. (Can't wait to tell you about the bed I found! Later...) Not only can I save a lot of money, but I feel good about extending the lifetime of a quality used product rather than buying something new. Buying new stuff isn't a bad thing (gawd knows I've done some serious damage at IKEA) but I want to see what I can reuse.

I've always heard great things about the Habitat for Humanity ReStore located under the Morrison Bridge, so I finally made it over last week. It is all stuff for the home that's been donated by builders, businesses, individuals, etc. Windows, doors, lighting fixtures, scrap wood, sinks, appliances, table legs, you name it. Yep, very similar to the ReBuilding Center, but not as overwhelming (for me, anyway). They also have furniture! The furniture they get is random, but I have friends who go there frequently and have told me about amazing finds (guess it's more about luck and timing). When I was there, they had this really, really cool suite of office furniture -- modern, brightly-colored, on casters, loved it. I didn't buy anything, but now I know where to go if I need a piece of scrap wood, or just to scout around for treasure. Plus, it all goes to benefit a great organization.

A tip: if you go in winter, dress warm. It's a huge, unheated warehouse, and you'll want to spend more time digging through stuff if you aren't shivering. There are Habitat ReStores throughout the US and Canada, so check out the Habitat Web site for locations. Happy thrifting! (PDX ReStore is open Tues-Sat, 9-5.)

Recycling window envelopes

We got a question from Kelly in NW Portland asking:

Can you recycle envelopes? Even the ones with the plastic screens in the front? We get a lot of them at work and it seems like a waste to just throw them out.

Excellent question! Let me jump into a phone booth and don my super-hero Master Recycler costume. OK. There. Now I'm ready. (Just kidding, by the way. I am a Master Recycler, but we don't have super-hero costumes).

One of the cool things we did during our Master Recycler training was to go to a paper recycling facility in Oregon City. They showed us all the crazy steps it takes to recycle paper. Start to finish, it's a long haul. But the real take-away point I got was that it takes so much less energy to make paper from recycled pulp than raw wood pulp. So every little bit of paper that can be recycled should be recycled. The picture shows giant bales of paper being fed into even more giant paper-eating machines that turn it into pulp, from which they make recycled content paper. Hope I've impressed you with my fancy, Master Recycler techno jargon.

As far as the plastic windows that are in some business envelopes, those are filtered out while the paper is getting turned back into pulp. So you don't need to tear them out or anything. Machines sort it all out in the recycling process. Same thing goes for pasta boxes that have those little plastic windows too.

So please do recycle those window envelopes! It would be a crime to throw them in the trash.

How to green-up a playgroup?

You get a bunch of kids together for snack time and usually you want it to be quick and painless -- no fuss, no mess. But convenience foods generally translate into lots of waste. Susan wants to find ways to make her playgroup a little more green:

I stumbled onto your website and wanted to ask a question regarding playgroups here in Atlanta.  We host one every Friday in our neighborhood.  We have about 25-30 kids on any given Friday.  We rotate providing snacks and drinks for the kids.  We seem to create a lot of trash...juice boxes, wrappers from the straws, not to mention the the snack bag.  Can you give us an idea of how to make playgroup more green?

Should we reuse cups?  One person would have to wash them, but does that creat more water run off etc?  Is paper the way to go or is that wasteful? Any help would be appreciated.

This is such a great topic to explore! While I can't quite wrap my brain around having 30 kids in my home, I know our clever EnviroMom community can brainstorm some waste-reduction solutions. Here's one: what if each child brought their own durable cup from home and you served juice from bottles rather than individual boxes? Then the cup goes home with the child and one person isn't stuck washing 30 cups. The juice bottles can be recycled, et voila, you've eliminated a huge amount of landfill waste.

OK, EnviroMoms, how else can Susan's playgroup snacktime waste be reduced or eliminated?

Shining the spotlight of some fellow green bloggers

We get a ton of email from other green bloggers and wanted to shine the spotlight on a few:

• Cecily from EcoMetro (publishers of the fabulous Chinook Books) blogs on green parenting issues. We're hoping to meet Cecily at an upcoming GreenGroup meting.
• Smart Foods Healthy Kids, is having a healthy Valentines day recipe contest. It's a website site focused on teaching healthy (organic, non-toxic) diet and home habits to moms through recipes, videos, articles...  They also teach about solutions for people dealing with food allergies and intolerances. Do you have a recipe that is contest-worthy? Entries don't have to be Valentines-day themed, anything healthy and yummy is fine.
• Go a question? Ask Wooly M, who specializes in eco-friendly help. Wooly M is originally from Portland. Yay, Portland!
• Abigail has just started blogging about making her home a greener home. Check out her blog Greener Memphis. She notes that living in a "red" state it's pretty hard to find green alternatives, without breaking your budget.

Green on, everyone!!

EWG survey on kids' soft drink consumption

In my six plus years of being a mom, I feel like I spend a lot of time breaking bad habits that I made the mistake of condoning in the first place. Did you give your kids M&Ms as a reward for using the potty? I did. They don't ask for them anymore, but thank goodness. Yet it sure did take a long while to break them of that habit... I cringe to think of it now.

One area where I feel I made the right choice the first time was with soft drinks. I had a zero tolerance policy. Lucky for us, we practice what we preach these days. My husband used to have a thing for root beer. Mine was for diet Coke. But after a while, for whatever reasons. We stopped drinking them. Empty calories, or caffeine I needed to learn to live without. Brown, expensive, fizzy water that blackens your teeth. So the kids have never really tasted it. At least there's one habit I won't have to break...

Yet, I wonder if we're in the minority on this one. We're commonly asked at restaurants if the kids would like a soft drink with their meal. And I certainly see lots of kids chugging down the big gulps. So I'm very interested in the results of this survey Amanda, from the Environmental Working Group, just told us about:

EWG is surveying parents on their kid's soft drink consumption as a way to gather data about routine exposures to common soft drink ingredients. It's a short survey, and anyone who takes it will get a free update with the results once we've compiled them. I need your help getting the word out, because if we don't gather enough data we won't be able to do the study the way we want to.

Please take a few minutes to complete this important survey.

Chicken poop!

Babies and pets...they come with a lot of poop. How to manage it? Where to put it? Well, chickens are no different. Lots of poop. Chicken poop is great fertilizer, but what do you do with it in a small yard? Phyllis needs the straight poop from EnviroMom urban chicken keepers:

I know this may sound a bit weird but...
We have three chickens. We are new to this urban pet chicken thing.  Kids love them. I love them. Chickens are low maintenance and very entertaining.  My question is ... what do other urban chicken keepers do with their chicken poop?  I cringe when I put the droppings into the trash. It is such good fertilizer but our yard just doesn't have a spot for composting right now. We also have bunny poop which is also good fertilizer. Do you know of anyone who would want organic composting material like this?  We put in tidy paper bags with handles. Just seems a shame to sent it to a landfill.

Composting question from a novice

Heather A. has emailed a composting question. Experienced composters, please share your wisdom with a newbie:

First I want to say that I just started to waking up to the realization that I have a huge responsibilty as a citizen and mother to be as green as possible. I am slowly beginning to change some very habitual decisions I have made and its been eye opening. A friend told me about your website and I love it, great job-I am sure I will be visitng often as a resource of where and what to buy.

I have a composting question and just didnt know who to ask, if you dont know the answer its ok but i thought you might be able to tell me where to go with this. I just started composting about two weeks ago. I have an earth machine in my backyard and am adding my food scraps and my "browns" (dead leaves and such) So I am adding to it every week. I imagine it will take me a long time to fill this baby up and if I keep adding to it how will I ever get compost? Everything i have ready says I need to stir it up once a week but if I am doing that and adding once a week it seems like I would never make any progress. This seems so elementary to me but hopefully you can help :) thanks and thanks for the website!

Here's a link to Metro's online composting references. If you are in the Portland area, and you just started two weeks ago, I'd hazard our low temps are going to slow things down mightily. Compost needs heat, moisture and that balanced mix of browns and greens. On the plus side, the cold temps will keep the smells in check! Keep adding and as time, heat, micro-organisms, moisture and turning do their magic, the additions will break down into smaller bits, and ultimately will become compost. It's a long process, but it will happen.

Any other wisdom to share back-yard composters?