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Zero Waste and the Johnsons

I came across this video at JetsonGreen and just had to share it.

I first heard of the Johnsons via a friend sharing the link to her zero waste home blog and was intrigued by Bea’s take on the three Rs. Before you ever get to reduce, reuse or recycle, you should refuse, refuse, refuse. This is a concept I can completely support. I’ve often shared how we are such a consumer-driven society that we buy, buy, buy and really need to be stepping back and evaluating our lifestyles. That’s part of what I’ve tried to share here at thesimpleHOUSE.

I’m encouraged and humbled by the Bea and Scott. This gives me even more to strive for.

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Project Homeless Connect and Perspective

Saint Patrick’s Day, 2011. The day of the fifth annual Project Homeless Connect (PHC) in Lane County, Oregon. Simply “ordinary people finding extraordinary solutions to end homelessness.”

If you’re wondering here what aspect of living a simple, sustainable lifestyle this addresses, it falls squarely into the triple bottom line leg of social equity. This was the third year my wife and I helped. She helped with greeting and I was a restroom monitor (more on that later).

So what, exactly, is PHC?

“In any given night in Lane County, over 3,467 people are homeless or living in temporary shelters. 11,513 individuals in 9,134 households were homeless and received services from our local continuum of care last year. Hundreds more families are “hidden away” moving between family and friends, living in cars or facing imminent threat of eviction. It is difficult for people to feel safe, access health care or mental health treatment, find and maintain a job, resolve legal problems or keep their children in school while trying to manage their housing crisis or keep their families sheltered. People who are homeless struggle daily with the repercussions of unmet basic human needs for safety, stability and shelter.

Project Homeless Connect is a nationwide movement to increase access to services for homeless people and to engage local communities in finding a solution for homelessness. By convening a one-day, “one-stop shop” event, Project Homeless Connect offers assistance with housing, health care, legal issues, benefits enrollment, treatment and other basic needs to people who are homeless.”

This year, over 850 volunteers from our community served right at 1,600 guests. Homeless, near homeless people at risk. I love the restroom monitor slot. The first year I signed us up, we procrastinated and the only available slots were restroom monitors. My wife’s first reaction was something like, “you signed us up for what?” But we served and in doing that, we discovered that the people coming to the event were so respectful of the facility and the volunteers, that restroom monitor really meant hang out in the lobby and chat with people (and occasionally check on the restrooms).

And that’s where our perspective shifted. We met some fascinating people. Today, I met a man in a wheelchair with a service dog named Mr. Ed. I remember the Mr. Ed TV show. And so did he. Perspective.

Then there was Robert, who just needed help carrying his large trash bag of stuff and backpack to the bag check area. Robert walked slowly and haltingly with a cane. The bag check was at the other end of the lobby. I apologized for having to make him walk all the way across the lobby. His response? “It’s good exercise.” Perspective.

Or Matthew, who needed help for his diabetes because he needed insulin and his feet were going numb. Or James who simply wanted a sleeping bag.

It’s opportunities like this that encourage me to live with less stuff. I mean, how many shirts do I need? Simple, sustainable lifestyle. I met Doug, who helps with the Egan Warming Centers in our town. And I was reminded of Mary S. who I wrote about a while back. And I thought I need to volunteer there, too. Perspective.

Then I went through a fast food drive thru for my lunch, they messed up my order and I had to wait while they redid it, apologizing all over themselves. And I was able to say, “No problem. Really.” Perspective. After all, I had money to buy a burger and fries and a car to go through the drive thru and I could eat and not be hungry.

I can’t wait for Project Homeless Connect 2012.

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Van Jones and Green Jobs

Van Jones was appointed by President Obama early in his presidency. After a short six months as Special Advisor for Green Jobs in the Obama Administration, amid controversy over several issues, Jones resigned. My wife and I had the privilege of hearing Jones speak Monday night at the University of Oregon in the EMU Ballroom.

Jones is an engaging speaker, expressive and animated. But beyond that, the guy is simply smart. Actually, he’s wise. I make a distinction between smart and wise. Smart is the head knowledge that fills up your brain; wise is applying that head knowledge in practical, useful, helpful ways. And when it comes to all aspects of the triple bottom line (environment, economy and equity), Jones is definitely wise.

His lecture was titled “Beyond Green Jobs: the Next American Economy” and was presented as part of the University’s Humanities Center Tzedek lectures. As I have reflected on his talk, I’ve been trying to think what tidbit of something he said should be the focus of this post. That’s difficult. He touched on many topics across the spectrum of politics, the environment, social justice and economics. And I think the challenge I’m having distilling his talk down to one (or a few) talking points is the same challenge I had with my seminar at the Good Earth Home Show titled “Lifestyle of the Simple and Sustainable.” And that is: everything is connected. And because everything is connected, a linear thought process simply falls short.

So Jones’ talk, while it touched on many topics (Hurricane Katrina, politics, social justice, economics, the BP oil spill and his dad putting himself and several relatives including Jones through college), it was all connected. Because life and culture are all connected.

But I guess if I had to single out just one thought from Jones’ talk, it would be the concept that we have built our energy economy on death. Oil is dead dinosaurs. Coal is dead plant material. So we drill and dig (or blow up mountaintops) dead stuff to burn it for fuel and create even more death through pollution, illnesses, greenhouse gases, etc. Instead, we should be looking to the sun and renewable energy sources and the life they give (plant life, animal life, human life) and capture that through solar energy and wind power for starters. And I suppose that is what was so profound to me from Jones’ talk Monday. It’s profound because it’s so simple. Life? Or death?

I wonder what would happen in our neighborhoods, our regions, our world if we looked at everything through the lens of life rather than the lens of death? If we looked at every action, every process, every political decision, every social decision, every environmental decision through that filter, as cliché as this might sound, the world would truly be a much better place. It would benefit our environment, it would benefit our social equity and it would benefit our economy. Let’s start.

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Good Earth Home Show 2011

This was the second year, we were at the Good Earth Home Garden and Living Show. My architectural firm, Arbor South Architecture had a booth last year and we did it again this year.

This was also the second year we did a seminar. In 2010, we talked about our award-winning LEED Platinum home, theSAGE. This year, I was asked to speak again as part of an Architect focus. By the time I was asked, the topics of building a smaller house, energy efficiency (specifically via the Passivhaus concept) and why to hire an Architect were already taken. So I thought I’d share some of my thoughts that I’ve been sharing with you all here on my blog.

So if you attended the seminar today and enjoyed it, thank you; I enjoyed presenting it. I know the topics were a bit circular and not linear, but as I mentioned, everything is connected. And when everything is connected, it’s very hard to go in a straight line. This affects that and so on. But it’s rewarding to realize how one thing we do can affect another, which in turn can affect yet another. It kind of makes the shift in our paradigm and lifestyle choices all worth it.

I appreciated your questions and comments today. I do welcome your comments on the seminar. What you liked and even what you didn’t like. I also encourage your suggestions on what I should talk about next. Topic ideas are always helpful. For those who are interested, Click Here for my Front Porch article.

Thank you for allowing me to present you with a “shameless plug” for this blog. And again, thanks again for attending!

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Simple Sometimes is Really Good

OK, so a few days ago I dissed on the one-cup coffee makers with all the disposables. Now for something truly sustainable and amazing. It’s the Niagra Stealth HET (High Efficiency Toilet). Made by Niagra Conservation, the Stealth toilet is a single flush, using only 0.8 gallons. Most of the new dual flush toilets are 0.9 and 1.6 gallons per flush, depending on whether or not you are flushing #1 or #2. This toilet uses air-assist to achieve the results and seems to work very well.

I haven’t actually used one or seen it “in action”, but all indications are that it’s pretty amazing. It recently received recognition as one of the Top 10 Green Products for 2010 by the Environmental Building News organization.

It also is simpler, with less moving parts. It uses air and vacuum in the filling to help the efficiency of the flush, is quiet and retails for about the same as a good quality standard toilet: $300. It currently comes only in white. But it may the future of HE toilets.

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Save Ink and $$

My wife, Brenda, was looking through a magazine and came across an article on back to school stuff. Now, just a reminder, our kids are adults and out on their own; that’s why we’re wanting to downsize our house.

But this article intrigued her. It talked about a software program called EcoFont that saves 25% on the ink needed to print text. Some time ago, I talked about going paperless as much as possible. But sometimes, you do have to print. And when you do, this may be a great option. EcoFont leaves small voids in the text that don’t get filled with ink. This, in turn, saves the amount of ink you use (greener, because you’re consuming less and that saves all along the way from manufacture to product to disposal) and it saves you money.

You can download a basic font for free at their site. I did and printed out various sizes of text, from 10pt to 64pt just to see how it looked. And it looked fine for your basic text sizes (10pt and 12pt). At 14pt, you can start to see the holes and, as you can see from my picture with this post, at 64pt, it becomes a decorative font.

But most of our printing is text, and most is usually around 12pt font and this is where it shines. Based in the Netherlands, the software doesn’t appear to yet be available in the US. And it currently is only for Windows based computers running MS Office. So being a Mac guy, I’m a little disappointed. But they SAY, they’re working on other versions.

So, EcoFont, I’m waiting with anticipation! I just printed a sustainability report for a client and it was 20 copies with 24 pages, so it would have been nice to be able to print in a more responsible manner.

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Junk Mail

So last time I talked about phone books. Today I’d like to talk about junk mail. No one gets junk mail do we? Oh, really? You do?

Our recycle bin at home is dominated by the junk mail that comes to us in the snail mail. I think that’s the dominant form of paper we recycle. Some, we don’t even open or look at. It simply goes from mail box to recycle bin to making more junk mail.

It’s even worse at my office; and with the economy the way it is, it seems to have ramped up. We get some of the trade magazines for free. And we get eight copies– one for each staff. Sometimes two or three per staff if they have multiple spellings of our names. One trade company I know was sending us 10 copies. I contacted them, said we really only need one (it’s still a good publication), they said they would get it down to one. We’re still getting 10 and it’s been over a year. Maybe I should publish their name here…

There is a company I discovered a few years ago and I will publish their name here. I discovered them when I was getting 3 copies a month of an Eddie Bauer mailing advertisement (when there isn’t an Eddie Bauer store within 100 miles of my home). It’s called Catalog Choice (http://www.catalogchoice.org/). It’s free and it works. Think of the number of trees and water used simply to make and print the paper junk mail is sent to us on.

Like I mentioned with the phone books last time, it’s a way to opt-out of catalogues you don’t want to get. Or multiple catalogues to one address. It’s easy to use. And, since I originally joined, they have added an opt-in for electronic catalogs called iCatalog. The way it works is retailers really do want to target their mail ads. We really only want to get what we want to get. Catalog Choice puts that together in a database and viola! less junk mail. Retailers are happy, I’m happy, it’s a win win.

And, with diligence, it has made a difference. Our home junk mail has been probably cut 60 to 70%. Not all retailers participate, but many do. And there are more and more each month. Check it out; it’s a way to more the “halve” your junk mail.

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Saving Water

Water. Something we in the US take largely for granted. We go to the faucet, turn it on and don’t really think twice about it. For us it’s abundant, cheap and clean. And for those of us in the Pacific Northwest, it’s cool, refreshing and drinkable — right out of the tap.
But a lot of the world doesn’t have access to good, clean water. So why should I care? I should care because there is only so much water in the world. And being less wasteful is always a good thing. Americans use, on average almost 70 gallons of water per day per person. That’s a huge amount of water. And if we simply installed more water efficient fixtures and regularly checked for leaks, we could reduce that by about 35% to about 45 gallons per day. Not quite “half”, but darn close.
Most of the savings would come in more efficient toilets. I had a friend suggest taking the water bottles we throw away, filling them with water and putting them in our toilet tanks to reduce each flush. I remember a long time ago, they suggested doing a similar thing with bricks to displace the water, but it got brick gunk in the toilet and didn’t work too well.
So I wonder how this would work? We don’t use plastic water bottles, and I don’t want to buy them just to try this (I have one of those fundamental issues with water bottles), so here’s the challenge: give it a try and let me know how it works.
Some other ways to save water are to run the faucet when brushing your teeth only to get the toothbrush wet, then shut it off and only turn it back on when you go to rinse. Small step, but ask “would this be good if EVERYONE did it? I think so.
Shorter showers, only running full loads of dishes and clothes also would help. And, water efficient landscaping (another topic on another day), would be huge. Lawns are the number one irrigated crop in the world.
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Phantom Electricity

This handy little device is called “Kill A Watt”. I have one. It’s been very educational. You can buy them at most any hardware store and our local library will even check one out to you for free.
What is does is measure the amount of electricity flowing to any device: computer, TV, DVD player, stereo. You may or may not know this, but many devices draw electricity even when they are off. If you have a tv with a remote, it’s sucking electricity 24/7. All so you can have that “instant on” feature we absolutely can’t live without (forgive the sarcasm). This post meshes well with our thirty second rule I talked about earlier, only it could be almost a 24/7 rule.
It’s estimated that about 10% of our electricity use in our homes goes to phantom power. and that might not seem like much, but would you enjoy getting a check in the mail for 10% of your electricity use each month? I would.
Newer TVs and devices can get an Energy Star rating, and that’s better, but plug strips are becoming very popular. We have a TV/DVD/Apple TV in our bedroom. The TV and DVD are Energy Star and draw barely 1 to 3 watts while off (that’s not bad, but two devices x 3 watts x 24 hours x 365 days adds up). Plus, as big a fan as I am of Apple, our Apple TV (an older model, I’m an early adopter), was drawing 29 watts just sitting there!
So I got a plug strip. After, all, it’s not often we watch TV in bed, so even the 3 watts was more than we wanted to consume. Now, when we want to watch TV, I click on the plug strip. The down side is instead of instant on, I have to wait about 15 – 20 seconds. What’s unbelievable about this is that in our culture we would actually notice that. We should all just step back, take a deep breath and relax. We’d all be healthier for it.

I recommend you get or borrow a Kill A Watt and check out the phantom power in your home. It may be educational for you, too.
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White

If you’re following a recent wave on Facebook, you’ll have noticed women posting their bra color to raise awareness about breast cancer. Well, I had already planned this post, so thought it timely to go for it. I was originally going to call it “Halves and Doubles: Underwear”, but decided to change simply to “White”.
But what does this have to do with our desire to “halve it all”? Thanks for asking. Today’s post is actually about doubling. I have about 20 pair of briefs. There, I said it. TMI. But why does this even matter? Thanks for asking that, too.
If we adjust the amount of clothing we own so that we are able to run full loads of wash, not partial loads (and not even “almost full” loads), we will save water. So actually doubling the amount of underwear we own may ultimately save in the long run. So you see, it’s not just about doing with less, it’s about being smart about what we do.
I buy underwear that is well-made, all the same color (so they don’t need to be washed separately) and they last. Durability is a factor to consider, too, since that saves material, manufacturing, money, etc.
This can apply to clothing other than underwear, too, but a picture of a shirt here wouldn’t have been as eye-catching to you. And, just so you know, it was quite an experience Googling underwear images. THAT was truly TMI. It took me a very long time to find an image I felt was appropriate. Finally found this one on about page 24 of the search list.