One Geek, One Earth

Fuqua has hired a new company called Meriwether Godsey to be the food service provider for our in-house dining center. From the HR e-mail:

Meriwether currently serves 40 locations and their “foodie-ness” is shown by their signature recipes, use of their restaurants as labs, their chef management and their balanced menus.

Their cuisine emphasizes local, natural and organic foods while supporting the goals of responsible and conscious consumerism.They stress recycling,composting, use of biodiesel when possible and they are constantly striving for waste reduction. Their goal is to use sensible, eco-friendly strategies that balance environmental responsibility with each client’s needs and preferences.

Meriwether Godsey is committed to offering a balance of fresh, popular, nutritious, variety-filled cuisine, served with “restaurant-style” flair. Their menus, created “from scratch,” are based on input solicited from clients on an ongoing basis.

This is good stuff because it shows that Fuqua is working hard to try and make sure that all elements of the school fit the conservationist/environmental attitude that we hope/want our students have. And in the rare times I don’t bring my own lunch, I’ll have solid choices to choose from. Excellent.

The recycling “center” near me is not exactly newbie friendly. Newspaper and magazine containers are clearly marked, but the glass container has long since lost its label. The plastic container has 3 places to put plastic, but one seems to be for bleach bottles, one for milk bottles, and then one for everything else. And there is a cardboard container that is clearly marked “Corrugated Cardboard ONLY!!!!!”.

Here’s the issue - I had no idea how you defined corrugated cardboard. Was everything that was generally brown and had that paper texture to it cardboard? Did the box need to have the ubiquitous recycling symbol on it? What was this mysterious paperboard product that kept coming up? I felt like running around the house like a chicken with its head cut off.

At first I thought that paperboard wasn’t recyclable (if it can’t be recycled at my center…) but some research corrected that quickly.

• According to the city of Durham, paperboard can be recycled as mixed paper. Mixed paper includes phone books, white paperboard (white dry food/material boxes), brown paperboard (cereal boxes, paper towel rolls), white and colored non-standard office paper (construction paper, card stock, tablet paper), soft cover books, and folders. Mixed paper cannot include adhesives (envelopes), wax-coated paper, plastic-coated paper, or plastics or metals (spiral binders, plastic folder covers, paper with plastic windows). It also cannot include anything contaminated with food. The public often refers to paperboard as cardboard even though it isn’t. So unfortunately, I think I’ve been gathering a lot of stuff (plastic coated paperboard) that can’t be recycled.

• Corrugated “cardboard” is a strong, versatile packaging material that is universally accepted for recovery and recycling. Corrugated cardboard is made from two strips of flat cardboard on the top and bottom, and a wavy “corrugated” or fluted strip running through the center. It is most commonly found in boxes used for packaging and shipping items.
  

So, I have less stuff to recycle than I thought, but I did learn that my nearby recycling center is generally inadequate. If I was living in Durham or Raleigh, there would be curbside mixed recycling. But thankfully, Durham maintains a bunch of recycling centers, one of which is close enough to be doable. I’ll need to go check it out and see if I can do mixed paper there.

Sometimes your workplace can seem like it is in an entirely different universe from your home. That makes it much easier for someone like me who is still learning to change his habits to fall out of them when I get to work and back into them when I get home. So I’ve made a conscious effort to try and be better about being eco-friendly at work.

Turn off your computer and accessories

For the longest time, I kept my work computer on when I left work because I liked being able to come in the morning and get started right away. Now I turn the computer, monitor, and printer off when I leave and I find something else to do with those first few minutes of the day. I create a daily to do list that helps keep me focused, but you could get that morning coffee, catch up with coworkers, or anything else that takes a couple of minutes. It certainly doesn’t have to be idle time.

Keep your paper use low and recycle

It can be very easy at a well equipped workplace to be printing scads of documents. My big flaw was printing out email that had lists of webpage changes. I liked not having to switch being the window with the email and the window with my web page editor. Now I’ve raised my screen resolution and found a way to scrunch the two windows next to each other. If you can’t stop the printing habit, make sure to recycle what you use. This is actually easier for me at work than at home - the recycling center at home doesn’t have a white paper recycling bin, strangely enough. And if you get a chance, look at corporate documents and see if any of them could be distributed electronically rather than via paper.

Dump the plastic kitchen utensils

My workplace has a fantastic kitchen area and they even have a free soda fountain downstairs. But they have plastic cups, plastic utensils, paper plates, and all sorts of other things that are too easy to use and abuse. Get in the habit with me, as I start bringing my utensils and buying a drink container to use so I can dump the disposable cups. It also helps to give up the soda and just drink water. Healthier and I won’t have to wash my drink container anywhere near as often.

In the restroom

“If it is yellow, let it mellow” doesn’t really apply in the modern work restroom, where everything auto flushes about 3 seconds after you’re done. While there isn’t much to be done about that, what you can do is start using hand sanitizer rather than washing your hands (unless of course, they really need to be washed). It saves water (a big concern here in North Carolina) and it also saves either paper towels or the energy used for a hand dryer. If you’re part of a small business, just go ahead and buy it yourself and if you’re part of a large organization that doesn’t provide hand sanitizer, talk to your facilities manager about making some available. Just make sure that the sanitizer is greater than 60% alcohol, or it won’t be effective.

Part of changing my habits is also working on changing the family’s habits. My wife is, thankfully, cheerfully on board and willing to help in whatever fashion she can. My five year old daughter (actually, she doesn’t turn 5 until Groundhog Day, but I feel ok fudging the numbers here), on the other hand is a bit of a harder sell. Not because she’s not willing, mind you. Mostly because it can be hard to explain to her why we should do certain things.

For example, she understands pretty well why we need to conserve water - if we use too much, then we’ll run out. But then she wants to apply that logic across the board.

“So, Daddy, if we waste electricity, then we’ll run out of power and I won’t be able to play my computer, right?”

Then I explain that electricity, for the most part, comes from coal burning plants which put pollution in the air, which makes it hard for us to breathe. And she generally gets that. And she understands that throwing stuff away means it gets put in a big pile which keeps growing bigger (“Do the garbage men take the garbage to the big pile? Woowwww. . .”). But even when she understands, she’s 5. And that means she easily forgets because she’s so busy. So she’ll be in the shower and spending forever getting her hair wet. Or she’ll leave her room light on along with her music when she rushes to the living room to do something else. And that’s ok - I don’t expect her to be a tiny little environmentalist, especially when I’m at the beginning of the learning process myself. But I do hope she’s learning a little bit with me that will stick with her as she grows up.

Well, not literally.

But the first thing I can do is do those things which are low cost for me to change but that will have a relatively large effect for the time I have to put in. Increasing my recycling is a good easy way to start. While we don’t have curbside recycling in the area where I live, there is a little recycling “center” where various items can be recycled. While newspapers and cardboard (which I already recycle) are probably the largest amount of recyclable product that comes through the house, there is one specific plastic item that I have in mind to start with.

Just for reference, I have multiple sclerosis, the relapsing-remitting kind. It doesn’t really affect my life very often. The only reason that it matters in this context is that I have to give myself a shot once a day. The package that the shot comes in looks like this:

It is basically a plastic container that holds the shot, the solution and 2 alcohol wipes. Obviously, a lot of this is biohazard after it has been used and has to be disposed of in a sharps container. But that plastic container…ah-ha!. For those who don’t know (and that includes me until a couple days ago), there are 7 types of plastic:

According to Wikipedia, the 7 types of plastic resin codes are:

• Type 1 - PETE: Polyester fibres, thermoformed sheet, strapping, soft drink bottles
• Type 2 - HDPE: Bottles, grocery bags, recycling bins, agricultural pipe, base cups, car stops, playground equipment, and plastic lumber.
• Type 3 - PVC: Pipe, fencing, and non-food bottles
• Type 4 - LDPE: Plastic bags, various containers, dispensing bottles, wash bottles, tubing, and various molded laboratory equipment.
• Type 5 - PP: Auto parts and industrial fibers.
• Type 6 - PS: Desk accessories, cafeteria trays, toys, video cassettes and cases, insulation board and expanded polystyrene products (e.g. Styrofoam).
• Type 7 - Other: Everything else.

Due to economic constraints, pretty much only Types 1-3 are recycled. But thankfully, the plastic container from the shot is a Type 1. So I’ve gotten a decent sized bin out of the garage that’s not being used for anything and it has been turned into my Type 1 recycling bin. This will most likely warrant me making a trip out to the recycling center a little more frequently, but that’s not a big deal. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to keep my eye on all the plastics in the house and see what can be recycled. I get the feeling I might be surprised by how much there will be.

I can’t claim to have done a whole lot for the environment up to this point in my life. I guess for the purposes of this blog, that’s probably a good thing, since I wouldn’t have anything to write about otherwise. But for the purposes of the environment, not so good.

Lightbulbs

I have replaced most of the lightbulbs in my house with compact fluorescents. There are a few that I haven’t managed to get yet, namely the two outside lights (front porch, back deck) and the lights in the main bathroom. The shower light and bath light are both traditional fluorescents, but the lights over the sink are 8 large spherical 60W incandescents. Since I haven’t had the money to replace those, I just try not to use the sink overheads unless absolutely necessary; the bath light plus frosted window usually provides enough unless it is pitch dark.

Recycling

We do a minimal amount of recycling. I get the daily paper, which is one of my small pleasures. I like the physicality of the newspaper, much like I prefer a real book over an e-book. We recycle the newspaper and we recycle corrugated cardboard. We don’t drink soda, so no aluminum cans to recycle. I recycle white paper at work but I tend to slack here at home.

Water Conservation

I’m in North Carolina (specifically the Raleigh-Durham area), which is in the middle of the worst drought since the weather folks started keeping records. I have to drive over a section of Falls Lake every day and it has been basically a dry plain for months. It’s a shallow section, but still. All the cities are down to shockingly small amounts of water. I live in Granville County, so I’m not technically under any water restrictions like the city residents are, but I’m doing my best to keep water usage down. We’re following the old “If it’s yellow, let it mellow” routine to keep our toilet water usage minimal. I’m also taking showers by getting wet, turning off the water, shampooing my hair, turning on the water and rinsing, off with the water again while I soap up, and then a final quick burst. Not my favorite way to take a shower, but such is life in the midst of a drought. My wife and I were never big lawn waterers, so we don’t have to worry about that.

Driving

I’ve changed my driving habits so as not to accelerate and brake so quickly and generally try and keep a smoother rate of speed transition. This has paid off in improved gas mileage from about 24-25 mpg to 26-28mpg (I drive a Mazda 626, 4 cylinder). Unfortunately, for my weekend gaming, I have to make a 45 min drive there and back again. I end up using a full tank of gas every week. One of the major disadvantages of where we live is that while we’re a 15 min jaunt down the interstate to where the wife and I work, we tend to be 30 min+ away from everything else. We’re 15 mins away from the first decent grocery store, and unfortunately none of that is going to change until we move, which will hopefully happen sometime this year. We’re planning to move somewhere closer to a good grocery story and to our friends, cutting into all the time we end up spending in the car.

Next up, what’s the first step on the trip to eco-friendliness?