27th January, 2012 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
I drink an average of 3 cups of tea a day, so I was excited when I saw some tips from in.gredients website about being green when you make a cup of tea. In case you don’t remember, I’ve posted about in.gredients before, a store that, once it opens this fall, will be the first package-free store in the U.S. (very exciting!) You can learn more about them from their website here.
Recently I noticed that they have a really nice blog with green news, tips, and store updates, and so, given my tea habit, this blog post about being less wasteful in the tea making process was pretty cool. Here are some of their tips:
When it comes to tea, don’t let those cardboard boxes and and single-use disposable bags cramp your style – you don’t need ‘em! Here’s how to cut them out of the picture (and the trash can):
- Buy tea in bulk (in.gredients-style) and store it in a reusable container – a mason jar works great; so do tins and other jars.
- Use muslin tea bags – these are washable and reusable! Plus you have control over how much tea you want to steep, and can add other ingredients if you like.
- Go bag-free by using a tea pot with a built in tea infuser (like the one pictured above), or use a french press.
When finished, spent tea makes great compost!
You can also get a tea infuser/ball for a single cup, and that way you don’t have to wash out a tea pot as well once you’ve made tea for yourself.
Check out their website for other helpful tips!
23rd January, 2012 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
I know Carsi posted before about making her own veggie broth, but it’s been more than a year since she wrote that post, plus I tried it for the first time this month, and ventured into making chicken broth as well, so I thought it’s good timing for a review.
First of all, why would you want to make your own broth?
1) It’s green because by not buying broth in a container at the store, you’re not wasting all that packaging
2) It’s also green because you’re using resources (vegetable scrapes or a chicken carcass) that otherwise would go straight to the trash or compost bin
3) It has no preservatives
4) It tastes really good
5) It makes the whole house smell nice
6) Chicken broth and veggie broth at the store are pretty expensive, and even more expensive if you want organic. Last time I checked, a container of organic veggie broth cost about $3.
Using Carsi’s tips here, I made one batch of veggie broth a few weeks ago. It’s so easy to save up the scraps to make this – I just store a gallon Ziploc freezer bag in my freezer, and pull it out every time I know I will be cutting up veggies. Any onion ends, onion peels, carrot ends, thick stems of greens, garlic peels, etc. go into the bag after being cut into no larger than 5 inch pieces. The bag then goes back into the freezer to wait for more scraps, and once I have a full bag worth, I have enough to make broth. I’ve simplified the process a little by just dumping the whole bag of frozen veggies in a large pot, covering with water, bringing to a boil, and then lowering to a simmer for about 40 minutes. Once it’s strained and cooled I put it into small reusable containers and store in the freezer till I need them.
Inspired by the success of the veggie broth, I made chicken broth as well. Earlier in the week I had purchased a whole chicken, and after it was cooked and I had gotten most of the meat off, I saved the whole carcass, including any skin and the wings, in a Ziplock bag in the freezer until I had time to make my broth. When the time came, I followed these instructions, using the first method and adding a handful of frozen veggie scraps from the freezer. I covered everything with water, brought to a boil, and the reduced the heat to simmer for about 4 hours. It was really easy and really flavorful.
remains after making broth, ready for the compost bin
20th January, 2012 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
I saw this article in the Austin Business Journal today that says that the city of Austin is launching a pilot program to encourage its downtown employees to choose an alternative means of transportation versus driving their own cars to work each day. At first when I read the story I got really excited because I thought it was open to all downtown employees, but it’s only for City of Austin employees.
If you are a City of Austin employee, though, it sounds pretty amazing: the article states that in an effort to reduce downtown congestion, ”The city will pay participating employees $50 per month for leaving their cars at home and is aiming for 20 percent participation among its downtown workers. The city will also provide a free Capital Metro transit pass, personal commute advisors, guaranteed rides home for emergencies and trip reduction training classes.”
19th January, 2012 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
The City of Austin is still offering rebates on composters to residential customers who downsize to a 32 gallon garbage bin and take a free composting class. The rebate is good for 75% of the cost of the compost bin, up to a $75 value. Classes are scheduled for January 24, 25, and 28 and February 1 and 4, but you must register first for the class. Learn more about the classes here and learn more about composting here. You can learn about my experience composting and getting the rebate here.
11th January, 2012 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
Austin Climate Protection Program sent me an email today with “5 Sustainable, Achievable Resolutions for the Busy and Cash-Strapped,” which offers some great ideas to try for 2012 to be a little kinder to the environment. It’s a really thoughtful list with links to resources, so I thought I would share it here:
- Leave the car at home one day a week. If you rode public transportation or carpooled (or walked, or biked, or skateboarded…) to work once a week, you’d reduce your CO2 emissions by almost 2,000 pounds per year, save hundreds of dollars in gas annually, and feel great about your contribution to reduced traffic and improved air quality across Central Texas. Visit the Commute Solutions website for ideas and resources.
- Learn to compost. Take a first step toward becoming a Zero Waste household by attending one of Austin Resource Recovery’s free composting classes. The classes are part of the City department’s composting rebate program, which challenges Austinites to complete a free composting class, downsize to a 32-gallon trash cart and purchase a home composting system. Austin Resource Recovery curbside customers who do these three things are eligible for a rebate of 75 percent off the cost of their new home composting system, up to $75. Visit Austin Resource Recovery’s website for details.
- Adjust the indoor temperature this winter. Turn your thermostat to 68 degrees or below. Reduce the setting to 55 degrees before going to sleep or when leaving for the day. For each 1 degree you turn down the thermostat in the winter, you’ll save up to 5% on your heating costs!
- Replace a patch of thirsty turf grass. Commit too stop watering your stressed lawn. The drought continues, yet Austin is still dumping a lot of our precious water onto turf grass lawns. This year, take a fresh look at the area around your home and imagine how your new landscape will look with plants that are more likely to survive without extra water on your part. City of Austin Water Conservation has other drought survival tools at its website.
- Join a CSA. A CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture program, is an arrangement you make with a local farm: You subscribe up front, they provide you with local produce for a week, a month, or a season through a convenient pickup or dropoff system. It’s a delicious way to reduce the distance from the farm to your plate. Edible Austin has a list.
My husband and I are already members of a CSA (Johnson’s Backyard Garden) and we compost, plus we keep our house pretty cold (56 when we’re not there and 63 at night) but our front and side yard are all grass (the back yard is woods), and I stopped riding the bus in the fall as I had several appointments in the middle of the day that I needed to drive to from work, and then I got busy during the holidays and needed to run errands during my lunch hour. I’ve mentioned before on this blog that the cost of riding the Express bus in Austin is similar to the cost of paying to drive into work each day, which is unfortunate, but their suggestion to just try to leave your car at home one day a week is more manageable and I’m going to try and incorporate that into my routine.
Learn more about the Austin Climate Protection Program here!
4th January, 2012 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
One of the Daily Green’s suggestions for 2012 New Year’s resolutions was to try and cut down on junk mail you recieve:
Each year, 19 billion catalogs are mailed to American consumers. All those catalogs require more than 53 million trees and 56 billion gallons of wastewater to produce — and many of us don’t even know how we got on so many mailing lists! So grab that stack of catalogs piling up on your coffee table and clear out the clutter. Visit CatalogChoice.org to put a stop to unwanted catalogs. Within 10 weeks, your mailbox will be empty of unwanted catalogs. A less cluttered mailbox means less pollution, less waste and less of the pollution that causes global warming.
So I checked out CatalogChoice.org and signed up. It was really fast and easy and allows you to pick which catalogs you don’t want to receive. I knew off the top of my head that I’d been getting a lot of West Elm and Victoria’s Secret catalogs even though I’ve never ordered from one of their catalogs, so I added those in there. Sounds like a great service!
28th December, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
The Huffington Post has gathered several ideas on way to reuse your holiday wrapping paper, including ironing paper on a low setting (courtesy of Martha Stewart), shredding paper to make decorative padding for fragile items you’re shipping (courtesy of Instructables), and making decorative bows out of strips of paper (also Instructables). You can also save your holiday cards for next year and make gift tags out of them (Martha) or try to make small gift boxes out of them( craftypod).
I also found this earth 911 post about why you shouldn’t use wrapping paper to begin with, which would have been helpful if I had posted it before Christmas, but it still is good to keep in mind for birthday presents, Valentine’s Day presents, etc. The highlight is this:
It can often be difficult to find a location to recycle your wrapping paper because of the materials are typically non-recyclable.
- Wrapping paper is often dyed and laminated.
- It can also contain non-paper additives, such as gold and silver coloring, glitter and plastics.
- It can be very thin and contain few good quality fibers for recycling.
- It usually has tape on it from the gift wrapping.
Thus, the article encourages you to reuse materials (for example, gift bags, newspaper, tissue paper that items are shipped or packaged in) when getting your presents ready.
27th December, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
Did you buy a real Christmas tree this year and don’t know how to dispose of it? Good news! If you’re a Austin garbage customer (like a home owner or home renter), just put your tree out on the curb on your regular trash day and the city of Austin will pick it up. If you aren’t a regular Austin garbage customers, for example if you live in an apartment, you can take your tree down to Zilker Park. Either way, your tree will be turned into Dillo dirt or mulch, rather than sent to a landfill. Check out more information from the city’s website here (info on curbside recycling) or here (info on Zilker Park recycling).
19th December, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
Austin 360 has this article about a new reusable cup made by Austinite Adreinne Oujezdsky. The article explains that Adrienne noticed that runners and walkers were going through hundreds of the paper cups that are set out along with jugs of water on the Lady Bird Lake trail (RunTex, which supplies the water, estimates that an average of nearly 8,000 cups per day are used on the Austin trail.) So Adrienne created SipECup, which has the same small cone shape that the disposable paper cups have, but is locally made using plastic and can fold up easily and be stored in a pocket of your running shorts. I think it’s a really great idea and hopefully will raise awareness of how many paper cups are thrown away each day on the trail.
The article also notes that you don’t even need to spend money to be greener while on the trail – there’s a new water fountain on the trail near the Mopac Bridge. There article doesn’t go into the locations of other existing water fountains, but there are quite a few – I believe there’s one near the pedestrian bridge on the North side of the river, one near the pedestrian bridge on the South side of the river, one on the North side of the river just West of the I-35 bridge, and one of the South side of the river just East of Riverside.
Another green option is to but a water bottle at a running store, which is more bulky, but allows you to run in areas that aren’t guaranteed to have water. Many of them come in a little carrier that can be strapped around your waste, and some have a pouch so you can carry keys, money, etc. Just one more idea!
Here’s an excerpt from the 360 article about Adreinne:
Adreinne Oujezdsky, 28, grew up running the downtown trail. The idea for reusable cups popped into her mind after she ran past the water coolers three years ago and wondered how many cups she’d use in her lifetime.
That led to some research on how many single-use cups are used at races around the country. She found out that the top 50 U.S. races alone generate more than 660,000 pounds of disposable cups, which mostly wind up in landfills.
“I’d love to see a day when the cups aren’t overflowing the trash bins — both on our trail and our streets after local races,” Oujezdsky says.
Oujezdsky, who has a background in advertising, dug into her bank account and begged friends and family for seed money, eventually collecting $46,000 to pursue her idea for an easy-to-carry cup that could be used over and over.
She purchased a molding machine from China and had it shipped to Boerne, where the cups are now made.
She calls her invention the SipECup. (E stands for environment.) The cone-shaped cups look similar to the paper ones available now on the trail, only they’re made of flexible material similar to what’s used in the yellow LiveStrong wristbands.
Eventually, she’d like to see race organizers use the cups at events. Sponsors could advertise on them, and runners would either keep or toss the cups, which would be gathered, then washed or recycled.
She hopes runners think about the environment the next time they stop for water.
“I wanted it to be easy. Being an athlete is hard enough. It should be easy to do good,” Oujezdsky says.
The blue SipECups sell for $5 for a pack of two and are available at RunTex, Rogue, Mellow Johnny’s and Bettysport. Expect to see a pink version at the Komen Race for the Cure next year.
12th December, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
According to the Statesman:
The City of Austin is expanding a recycling program for old, power-guzzling refrigerators that costs the city about $325 per refrigerator.
The city’s electric utility gives rebates of up to $50 to customers who turn in their working refrigerators and freezers, and it will begin accepting window air-conditioning units, dishwashers, stoves and clothes washers in the coming year, Austin Energy officials said. Rebate amounts for those appliances haven’t been set yet.
Last week, the Austin City Council approved a $1,025,000 , one-year contract with Appliance Recycling Centers of America to pick up, recycle and pay the rebates for about 3,200 appliances turned in by Austin Energy customers.
The program is designed to encourage customers to switch to new appliances that use as much as three times less energy. That can reduce peak power use for the city, making rates less expensive overall for customers, said Austin Energy spokesman Carlos Cordova.
The article also explains:
Any Austin Energy customer can have an old appliance removed. Customers in single-family homes can recycle only two refrigerators and freezers a year, while multifamily customers and businesses can recycle any number of them, Leinweber said. Refrigerators and freezers must be between 14 and 27 cubic feet….
To have your old appliances picked up, contact Austin Energy at 800-452-8685 or email custinfo@austinenergy.com.
7th December, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
Austin EcoNetwork had this very well written article about green ideas for holiday presents. The focus of the article is that rather than buying more “stuff” (which will most likely end up in a landfill someday), you can buy non-”stuff” presents like restaurant gift cards, show tickets, memberships (like a membership to a CSA) ,massages or spa days, and music or sports lessons. Only if a non-”stuff” present won’t work should you then look at buying “stuff” as a present, and at that point you can make your own gifts or look for eco-friendly products or products which will help the gift receiver be more green, like a reusable travel mug of cloth napkins. Check out the article! It certainly made me rethink my gift giving plans for the year!
23rd November, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
Today the Statesman has an article about TreeHouse, a new eco-friendly home improvement store in Austin off of South Lamar. The article says:
The emphasis at TreeHouse, 4477 S. Lamar Blvd. , is on green products — everything from nontoxic paints to reclaimed wood floors to insulation made of recycled denim, newspapers and beer and wine bottles.
“We thought Austin deserved its own home improvement store,” co-founder Kevin Graham said. “This is very Austin — the Whole Foods version of a home improvement store.”
Products were selected after a careful, months-long vetting process that examines their performance, sustainability and impact on a user’s health and the manufacturer’s record of corporate responsibility.
“It’s a very intricate process that uses a database with a lot of questions,” co-founder Jason Ballard said. “Behind every product on the shelves, there’s some good-hearted person trying to save the earth.”
“We’re truth tellers and green promoters,” co-founder Evan Loomis said.
Check out their website here and learn more about their products and services. I’m definitely curious to check it out!
18th November, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
If you’re committed enough to going meatless for Thanksgiving to help the environment, I found some mouth-watering looking ideas for a vegetarian Thanksgiving from the New York Times here. Some recipes I’d like to try include the baked kataifi-wrapped goat cheese, brioche stuffing with chestnuts and figs, and pumpkin seed battered “chicken” with cranberry cabernet sauce. I’ve always loved the sides more than the bird anyway 
Check them out!
However, if you’re not up for giving up the turkey, you can still make a big impact by buying a local, organic turkey.
Nixing the paper plates and plastic utensils, using green cleaning products to clean the house before your holiday guests arrive, as well as buying your veggies from a local farm also make a big difference!
1st November, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
I came across this article “Plastic Bags are Killing Us” by Katharine Mieszkowsi and found it very interesting and a good reminder of why Austin would consider banning plastic bags. Here’s just an excerpt, but I encourage you to read Mieszkowsi’s full article as it’s very educational and well written. I’ve left in the hyperlinks she included, which are interesting to explore as well, and I’ve highlighted some parts I found most intriguing:
The plastic bag is an icon of convenience culture, by some estimates the single most ubiquitous consumer item on Earth, numbering in the trillions. They’re made from petroleum or natural gas with all the attendant environmental impacts of harvesting fossil fuels. One recentstudy found that the inks and colorants used on some bags contain lead, a toxin. Every year, Americans throw away some 100 billion plastic bags after they’ve been used to transport a prescription home from the drugstore or a quart of milk from the grocery store. It’s equivalent to dumping nearly 12 million barrels of oil.
Only 1 percent of plastic bags are recycled worldwide — about 2 percent in the U.S. — and the rest, when discarded, can persist for centuries. They can spend eternity in landfills, but that’s not always the case. “They’re so aerodynamic that even when they’re properly disposed of in a trash can they can still blow away and become litter,” says Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste. It’s as litter that plastic bags have the most baleful effect. And we’re not talking about your everyday eyesore.
Once aloft, stray bags cartwheel down city streets, alight in trees, billow from fences like flags, clog storm drains, wash into rivers and bays and even end up in the ocean, washed out to sea. Bits of plastic bags have been found in the nests of albatrosses in the remote Midway Islands. Floating bags can look all too much like tasty jellyfish to hungry marine critters. According to the Blue Ocean Society for Marine Conservation, more than a million birds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles die every year from eating or getting entangled in plastic. The conservation group estimates that 50 percent of all marine litter is some form of plastic. There are 46,000 pieces of plastic litter floating in every square mile of ocean, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. In theNorthern Pacific Gyre, a great vortex of ocean currents, there’s now a swirling mass of plastic trash about 1,000 miles off the coast of California, which spans an area that’s twice the size of Texas, including fragments of plastic bags. There’s six times as much plastic as biomass, including plankton and jellyfish, in the gyre. “It’s an endless stream of incessant plastic particles everywhere you look,” says Dr. Marcus Eriksen, director of education and research for the Algalita Marine Research Foundation,which studies plastics in the marine environment. “Fifty or 60 years ago, there was no plastic out there.”
Following the lead of countries like Ireland, Bangladesh, South Africa, Thailand and Taiwan, some U.S. cities are striking back against what they see as an expensive, wasteful and unnecessary mess. This year, San Francisco and Oakland outlawed the use of plastic bags in large grocery stores and pharmacies, permitting only paper bags with at least 40 percent recycled content or otherwise compostable bags. The bans have not taken effect yet, but already the city of Oakland is being sued by an association of plastic bag manufacturers calling itself the Coalition to Support Plastic Bag Recycling. Meanwhile, other communities across the country, including Santa Monica, Calif., New Haven, Conn., Annapolis, Md., and Portland, Ore., are considering taking drastic legislative action against the bags. In Ireland, a now 22-cent tax on plastic bags has slashed their use by more than 90 percent since 2002. In flood-prone Bangladesh, where plastic bags choked drainage systems, the bags have been banned since 2002.
The problem with plastic bags isn’t just where they end up, it’s that they never seem to end. “All the plastic that has been made is still around in smaller and smaller pieces,” says Stephanie Barger, executive director of the Earth Resource Foundation, which has undertaken a Campaign Against the Plastic Plague. Plastic doesn’t biodegrade. That means unless they’ve been incinerated — a noxious proposition — every plastic bag you’ve ever used in your entire life, including all those bags that the newspaper arrives in on your doorstep, even on cloudless days when there isn’t a sliver of a chance of rain, still exists in some form, even fragmented bits, and will exist long after you’re dead.
And further down in the article:
The only salient answer to paper or plastic is neither. Bring a reusable canvas bag, says Darby Hoover, a senior resource specialist for the Natural Resources Defense Council. However, if you have to make a choice between the two, she recommends taking whichever bag you’re more likely to reuse the most times, since, like many products, the production of plastic or paper bags has the biggest environmental impact, not the disposal of them. “Reusing is a better option because it avoids the purchase of another product.”
25th October, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
APL is having a new program that starts this Saturday and runs till March 3, 2012, to encourage people to borrow books from the library rather than buying books, which wastes more paper. Their website says all ages can participate, and by participating you may win a prize. It sounds like a great program to encourage kids to participate in. They’re having a kickoff party this Saturday, where there will be crafts for all ages and you’ll get a free redbud seedling. Here’s the info:
Attention tree lovers of all ages, the Leaf for a Leaf program promotes borrowing library books to reduce the number of trees that are cut down to make paper. Learn to improve the air we breathe, minimize environmental impact, and enhance your surroundings. The program celebrates trees in the late fall through the early winter because it is the best time to plant them in Central Texas. This year Leaf for a Leaf takes place from October 29 through March 3. Make sure to participate in our Leaf for a Leaf reading contest. Turn in a card at the Twin Oaks Branch, 1800 South Fifth Street, for every five books you read. The more you read, the better chance you have of winning a big prize. So what are you waiting for? Start reading a leaf for a leaf now!
October 29 from 1 to 3 p.m.
Leaf for a Leaf Kickoff Party @ Twin Oaks Branch, 1800 S. Fifth St.
Let’s celebrate Arbor Day! Join us for tree-themed kid’s crafts and a terrarium workshop for teens and adults. That’s right, you can walk away with your very own terrarium. Everyone who attends will receive a free redbud seedling. Austin Parks and Recreation’s Urban Forestry experts will be on hand to teach you how to care for your new tree-to-be. There will also be cookies for all.
4th October, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
Check out these innovative costumes on the Daily Green’s website! My favorite is the kidnapped mermaid:
although Wall-e is also really cute:
Check them all out and find out what they’re made from here!
30th September, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
This week I finished another batch of compost for my garden, made over several months from our food scraps, issues of the Statesman I bring home from work, and occasional grass clippings.
I’ll let it settle for a few more days on the plastic tarp I collected it on before I add it to one of my gardens. Go me! Click here to learn more about rebates the city of Austin has for compost bins as well as free composting classes the city offers, which is how I got a $75 rebate on my compost bin.
26th September, 2011 - Posted by katherine - 1 Comment
Two weekends ago I had the opportunity to meet Katie Schon who with her husband Rick have started RK Re-Purposing, a very cool Austin business that specializes in finding new uses for old things.
So far the business primarily focuses on making rain barrels out of food-grade barrels (see above) and garden planters out of old fencing. But they’ve also started designing some furniture, like this sturdy bench, also made out of old fencing, which would be perfect in a backyard garden. (Check them out on facebook and “like” their page and you’ll also be able to see an Adirondack chair Rick recently built out of old fencing, which I’m really coveting.)
The fencing they use would otherwise be burned or hauled to a dump (like now when we’re in a severe drought), so it’s great they’ve found a new use for it. Visiting their stand made me really want to get gutters on our house so we can have a rain barrel! The rain barrels Rick and Katie make sell for $45 each, which compared to what you see at garden stores and Whole Foods, is a much better price. Check them out at the Sunset Valley Farmer’s Market, or contact them if there’s a special project you have in mind!
15th September, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
Carsi wrote awhile ago about her experience making her own deodorant using items you can easily find in your grocery store (baking soda, essential oils, coconut oil, cornstarch). I was interested in giving it a try and Carsi let me use her leftover coconut oil and tea tree oil to make my own, and thus started my summer of using all natural deodorants.
Before I get to the nitty gritty of my summer, why use natural deodorants in the first place? Well, I was motivated, not by concerns about my own health, but by concerns about the chemicals in my deodorant (parabens) working their way into waterways and becoming and staying a part of our environment. I figure there are many products I use every day that are probably going to cause me to get cancer in 30 years, but I don’t want to live my life worrying about how I may be killing myself slowly. I do care though about not contributing to pollution, and if I can do without whatever minimal unhealthy/polluting chemicals are in my Secret deodorant, why not give it a try? So with that thinking, I set out to see if I would be a sweaty mess without traditional deodorant.
I actually started using the DIY deodorant Carsi recommended in April. I found this recipe to be a lot of work though. Mine came out crumbly after I initially made it, so I took it all out of the dispenser, added some more coconut oil to make it less crumbly, and tried again, but it was still a little crumbly. I left it in this somewhat crumbly state and have been using it this way, but basically it makes it inconvenient to apply. I have to sort of lean over the bathroom sink when I put it on so that any extra crumbles are caught in the sink rather than making a mess in the bathroom. Once it’s on though, it works well for controlling odor, but not great for an antiperspirant. It’d give it 4 stars for odor control but only 2 for wetness control.
Seeking a deodorant that’s easier to apply without being super expensive, I came across a review of natural deodorants that ranked Burt’s Bees Herbal Deodorant with Oil of Sage Spray very highly. It is a spray on, and has a pine tree smell that I really enjoy. It’s not very feminine smelling, but I like it a lot. It cost about $8 at Whole Foods, but I’ve been using mine probably 5 times a week since April and I still have over half of the bottle left. I give it 5 stars for odor control and 4 stars for wetness control.
As the summer got hotter though, I became concerned that my Burt’s Bees can, which I would store in my gym bag in my car while I was at work, may explode in the heat. A car full of deodorant was the last thing I needed, so I started to look for a solid all natural deodorant that would not possibly explode in may car and, unlike my DIY deodorant, was easy to apply. I picked up some Alba brand deodorant from Whole Foods. It was under $5, and smelled nice. But I quickly found that it did not work. Not at all. I give it 1 star for odor control and 1 star for wetness control.
That’s when I tried some Arm and Hammer Essentials Natural deodorant, which I picked up at HEB for under $5. It has worked really well, actually just as well as my old Secret deodorant. There’s some indication it’s not as environmentally friendly as other all natural deodorants, but I think it’s a nice balance between being better for the environment than traditional deodorant, but also working well. I give it 5 stars for odor control and 5 stars for wetness control.
So there you have it! Given that I spent a lot of time outside in 100 degree heat this summer and didn’t become a sweaty, B.O. mess (which I’ll admit, I thought was a very real possibility during this experiement), I was impressed with how well the natural deodorants held up. At the very least, if you’re thinking of dabbling in a natural deodorant, I would recommend giving the Arm and Hammer a try, especially since it’s priced similar to traditional deodorant, or spend a little extra to try out the Burt’s Bees brand.
7th September, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
Given the horrific fires recently, I thought this info from the City of Austin about composting tips to prevent fires was timely and will hopefully be helpful to some. Honestly it never occurred to me that I needed to worry about my compost pile catching fire (and likely it wouldn’t since mine isn’t very large), so it’s good info to keep in mind:
Home composting piles are not typically large enough to combust. Compost piles heat up when microorganisms, such as bacteria and fungi, reproduce and break down organic material at a rapid pace. If a compost pile is more than 12-feet-high and the materials are relatively dry, the pile may self-heat to a temperature high enough to spontaneously combust.
Solid Waste Services recommends the following tips to keep compost piles safe during these hot summer months:
- Compost piles should be no larger than a cubic yard (3 feet by 3 feet by 3 feet)
- Turn piles weekly during high temperatures
- Keep the pile moist
- A compost thermometer may be used but is not essential; turn the pile when it reaches 160 degrees Farenheit
Residents can learn more about how to compost properly at free composting classes offered by SWS. The classes are part of the City’s composting rebate program, which challenges Austinites to complete a free composting class, downsize to a green, 32-gallon trash cart and purchase a home composting system. SWS curbside customers who do these three things are eligible for a rebate of 75 percent up to $75 off the cost of their new home composting system.
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