Who needs phone books these days?

I didn't make it my New Year's resolution to start blogging again, but here I am on Jan. 2 in my first post since August. Not because it's a new year and new start, but I've had the past 11 days off and I have time to blog.

I got new phone books on Saturday. Great, I thought, just as I'm purging old stuff to make room for my new clothes, I've got more crap I don't need. I wasn't totally sure that I could put my old ones in the recycling bin. Then today I got an "Eco Guide" from the city about its recycling programs. And there was my answer. Under the heading "Are you recycling all that you can?" was a photo of a telephone book (and a dirty pizza box with the description "clean pizza boxes." I hope people read the fine print because that could lead to some confusion). 

And then there was the really helpful info -- a website for opting out of getting phone books. I went to the link and was able to opt out of the little Yellow Book, but the brick from Verizon wasn't listed as a choice. But at least it's a start. And I'm currently looking through the Verizon book to find a number to call to opt out (hey, there are local maps in here? I remember when I used to like looking through the phone book for information about where I lived. Sigh, another casualty of the Internet).

It's never too late to recycle your shoes

Yes I'm alive. It's been a long time since I've blogged, so long that I'm too ashamed to look at the date of my last post to know just how long it's been. Let's just say it's been "a while" and leave it at that.

I'm writing tonight partly to get back in the habit, and partly to share that I dropped some old running shoes off at the Nike store to be recycled. I wrote about Nike's shoe recycling program when I first learned about it (so for all my "regular readers," this may be old news). But I figured it was worth mentioning again because it's such a cool thing. It's hard to know what to do with old running shoes because they're too worn down to be donated. I always felt bad throwing them in the trash. Nike's program is the biggest one I know of, and they take any brand, not just Nike. Their website says the rubber, fabric and foam is used to make running tracks, basketball courts and tennis courts. If you want to recycle your shoes, go to Nike's Reuse-A-Shoe website to find a recycling location.

When I dropped off my shoes the first time I told my rugby team about it since I figured they might have some old running shoes lying around. One of my teammates gave me two pairs of shoes, and then a few months ago I bought a new pair of my favorite Adidas Supernovas so I now had three pairs of shoes to recycle. Except that even though the Nike store is about a half mile from my office, I never got around to going. It's kind of a pain to go because it's at the Grove, a busy outdoor shopping mall near my office with parking you have to pay for. So I was only going to go if I could walk there and I always seemed to be too busy running after work (ah, the irony) or too tired and just wanted to go home. So the shoes have been languishing in my trunk for months. But tonight I decided to do some sprints after work at the park across from the Grove, so I brought the shoes with me and went to the Grove afterward. Finally, they were out of my car.

I'd been feeling bad lately about my lack of environmentalism (hence, the lack of blogging). I've been driving to work even though it's summer and the longer days make it easier to take the train. So this felt good. And tomorrow I'll be taking the train to work since I'm meeting my dad after work to go to the Hollywood Bowl. Maybe that will kick-start my public transportation habit again.

But taking the train means waking up early so now I've gotta go to bed. At least I can fall asleep feeling satisfied that I've crossed something off my to-do list!

An easy way to recycle wine corks

Back in my energy bar-eating days, I was trying to find out if I could recycle the wrappers. The answer is no, although Clif Bar has an upcycle program that turns the wrappers into other items. The rub is that you have to sign up and at the time, it's 500 slots were full. But while I was doing my research I came across suggestions for how to recycle other items that you can't put in your recycling bin. One of them was wine corks. You can send your corks to a building company that turns them into cork floor and wall tiles (www.yemmhart.com). Cool, I thought, and started saving my corks. I'm not a big wine drinker so I have a handful stored away in my kitchen (a few others I had were plastic and said they could be recycled). You have to pay to ship them so it wasn't the most convenient.

That's why I was excited the other day when I saw a box in Whole Foods where you can drop off your corks for recycling. I wondered if it was new since I'd never seen it before. Then a few days later, I got a comment on my old post about energy bar wrappers that said to try to find out what groups near you are part of the Clif Bar upcycling program and send yours to them (hey, good advice. Maybe the subject of a future post). The commenter sends theirs to a group that recycles wrappers and corks. The poster said Whole Foods collects corks too (natural and synthetic). Hey, I actually know that, I thought. So I went to the Whole Foods website and found out it was a new program (you can read about it here). In the West, the corks will be sent to Western Pulp, where they'll be used to make wine shippers. In the Midwest, they'll go to Yemm & Hart. And in the East they'll be send to another company that makes products from old cork. So now you can bring your corks to Whole Foods. It's a lot easier than mailing them.

Can I recycle that?

We've all asked ourselves that question a million times. Yesterday I finished a bottle of mustard and normally would be wondering if I could recycle the plastic cap. But now I know I can. I learned this from a reputable source -- Lisa Harris, Long Beach's recycling specialist (pretty cool title).

Lisa recently started answering recycling questions for Rene Lynch, the Los Angeles Times blogger who goes by the moniker The Recyclist. The post announcing this generated a robust discussion in the comments section with lots of great questions and tips. But that's not the way I contacted her. I e-mailed the city's Environmental Services Bureau when I noticed that they hadn't updated their website to say that they were now accepting Styrofoam for recycling. They'd mailed a flier announcing the change several months ago so I figured it was an oversight (and was being gleefully anal in contacting them). She was the one who replied back to say thanks, so realizing she was the same person who was answering questions for The Recyclist, I asked her my most burning recycling questions. I have many, many more questions but I started small, with just two questions. Didn't want her to think I was a freak or anything.

Me: I know plastic bottles can be recycled, but what about the caps? And I believe I can recycle soy milk cartons but wanted to make sure. I have a stack waiting to be recycled.

Lisa: In our curbside program we try and keep it as easy for the resident as possible. ...you may leave the caps on ... but if it's convenient and there is nothing smelly inside take them off. Yes, you can put soy milk cartons or even regular milk cartons in the purple bins.

Score! Best part is, she said I can always ask her directly. I haven't abused her kindness yet, but I'll be e-mailing her again with some of my other pressing recycling questions, particularly about whether it's worth it to use biodegradable bags. 

In the meantime, I enjoyed reading this post from The Recyclist about small things you can do. I couldn't resist and left a comment about what we do at work to reduce waste.

Green v. Consumerism at Christmastime

"In a world where people want to continue to aspire to middle-class consumption patterns, but they are also wanting to feel like they are responsible citizens who care about social and environment issues, how do they reconcile that? They go shopping for something that declares itself to be ecologically friendly."

Sadly, that quote from a UC Santa Cruz professor is true. It's from a Los Angeles Times article about retailers offering eco-friendly gifts for the holidays as a way to make money. The story says that according to a recent poll, nearly nine in 10 consumers identified themselves as "conscious consumers." Wow, that's a lot. More than I would have expected considering how few people I see using resusable bags at the grocery store (with the exception of Trader Joe's and Whole Foods shoppers, who have been on that bandwagon for a while now).

What's better for the environment? Buying gift wrap made from recycled materials or wrapping small presents in used sandwich bags you have lying around your house, cutting out the energy-using step of recycling the bags into other paper products? (I'm doing the latter.)

Buying presents I understand. It is Christmas after all and who doesn't want to do that? But I've been turned off by the Sunday circulars and TV ads that are pushing their great bargains on wrapping paper, gift bows and all that other crap. Sure, it made sense in the pre-global warming era to decorate our presents to the nines, but aren't we living in a more conscious time now (according to that poll, yes we are)?

Sure, use the wrapping paper you already have from years past, but let's not buy new bows and ribbon. And if you run out of wrapping paper, look around your house for something to use instead, like the Sunday comics, old paper bags and glossy pages from magazines. Have fun with it. If it's a clothing item, wrap it in the LA Times Image section. Heck, you could even use old pillow cases if it's a larger present (and then the recipient can cut up the linen into smaller cleaning rags for a gift that keeps on giving).

I've had fun wrapping my office Secret Santa present. I blogged earlier about how I planned to use paper bags to wrap my gifts this year, but would have to think of ways to make the presents look good despite my lack of artistic skills. So what I did was cut up a brown paper bag I already had, wrapped it in ribbon left over from a past Christmas and attached an old Christmas ball I bought this year at a thrift store. Then I wrote "Joy" in pen and, in a flash of brilliance, found a way to make use of those pesky circulars that inundate our mailboxes at this time of year. I cut out a cute bear from the Trader Joe's flier and glued it to the brown paper to make it look more festive. I knew any attempt at drawing something would look as bad as those terrible ornaments we made for our parents in elementary school (because my art skills haven't improved since then) so this was a way around that.

Let's think outside the proverbial Macys sweater box this holiday season to not just say we want to live green, but actually do it.

My Secret Santa gift, wrapped in a paper bag.

No second life for my energy bar wrappers

Talk about timing. While driving into work today I was listening to KPCC's Larry Mantle talk to the esteemed Dan Neil about the LA Auto Show. They were waxing poetic about the new generation of alternative fuel vehicles that are on display at the convention center. Then I caught a white van out of the corner of my eye with the Clif Bar logo. It said it was a biodiesel vehicle. I've got Dan Neil's voice coming out of my radio telling me about the technology of the future and I've got an example of that future two lanes over. Except I'm not ready to applaud Clif Bar yet. Why should Clif Bar get credit for being good to the environment when their wrappers are filling up landfills?

Energy bar wrappers aren't recyclable because of the inner foil lining that keeps the bars fresh. So Clif Bar has its Energy Bar Wrapper Brigade, an "upcycle" program in which used energy bar wrappers are used to make new stuff. I once tried to sign up but the trial program was full. Still, I was slightly hopeful because the website said they'd be expanding. I figured the best way to help the environment was to not eat energy bars at all so I drastically cut back. But when I did eat one, I kept the wrapper, hoping to one day be able to send them in so they could be used to make backpacks and purses. Well, here we are more than a year later and still no luck. I just checked the website again and there still are no open slots. I'm glad the company is committed to doing something, but the number of wrappers collected (about 650,000 so far, according to the website) is a drop in the bucket compared to how many are sent to landfills (millions every year). I understand that they have to cap the program because if everyone sent their wrappers in they'd have more than they could use. But it would be nice if they could pour the same enthusiasm they have for reducing their CO2 emissions into finding other uses for their wrappers. For a company that touts its environmental record all over its website, it seems disingenuous. The only other solution is for everyone to stop eating so many energy bars but I don't think Clif Bar will embrace that suggestion anytime soon. In the meantime, I'm having a funeral for all the wrappers that came with me when I moved but I've finally had to accept are destined for a landfill.

I collected these wrappers for more than a year but now they're in the trash.

Free reusable bags for LA County residents

I thought this was cool. Los Angeles County is trying to do its part to reduce the 6 billion plastic bags used by residents every year. Through Dec. 17, you can turn in five plastic bags and get a free (FREE!) reusable bag in return. The Brag About Your Bag campaign runs on weekends at participating Albertsons, Ralphs and Top Valus in cities throughout the county. I heard about it because my city, Long Beach, is participating and there was a brief story and column about it in our free weekly Grunion Gazette. Usually I blog about things I've done or plan to do (still haven't eaten those sardines, oops!) but I don't actually have five plastic grocery bags lying around my house because I'm really good about remembering my reusable bags when I go grocery shopping. But if I end up with five before Dec. 17, I'll be turning them in for a free bag. I already have eight reusable bags. Having so many guarantees there are always a few in my apartment and my car for my next shopping trip, but you can't have too many, especially since the two I have from Trader Joe's are a little worse for the wear.

The link for more information is www.bragaboutyourbag.com. To find out if your city is participating, click the Brag About Your Bag Campaign 2009 link on the left banner. Then click Partners and Sponsors along the top to see a list of cities.

A second life for my running shoes

Tonight I dropped off my old running shoes at a Nike store in L.A. to have them recycled. This is something I've been meaning to do since I found out about Nike's Reuse-A-Shoe program and blogged about it (that post is here). Nike recycles the rubber, foam and fabric in running shoes to make new athletic surfaces like tracks, basketball courts and playgrounds. And they take any brand, not just Nikes.

For months my dirty Adidas running shoes have been in my trunk, waiting to be put to better use. Even though I work down the street from the Nike store at The Grove, walking there after a long day at work was basically the last thing I wanted to do. But today, my day off, I had to go to work for a few hours so when I got done at 6 I decided to finally drop them off to avoid traffic (Getting stuck in rush hour traffic on my day off? No way.).

It was super easy. They have a bin in the back of the store where you drop off your shoes. I was happy to see it was about two-thirds full.

This is the only shoe recycling program I know of, which is surprising since it's such a cool idea. So next time you're feeling the ground beneath your feet when you run and you know it's time to get rid of your shoes, instead of sending them to a landfill, you can donate them to a good cause. And if you don't live or work near a Nike store like I do, you can give your shoes to me and I'll drop them off when it's time to recycle my current running shoes. Just as long as they don't stink up my car because they might be there for a few months!

Recycling my running shoes

I run, therefore I am ... constantly going through running shoes. Before my environmental awareness was kicked into full gear, I would throw away my old (dirty, smelly) running shoes. But a few months ago when I bought a new pair of my favorite Adidas Supernovas, I held onto my old pair because I vaguely remembered hearing about shoe recycling and donation programs. For weeks and weeks now, they have been sitting in a pile of "things to blog about" as a way of reminding myself to look into that. So today when my co-worker asked the "Urban Dieter" if I knew what to do with old shoes, I didn't have an answer. My other co-worker quickly found information online about shoe recycling offered by Nike (making me feel a little embarrassed for dragging my feet on this). The Reuse-A-Shoe website says the rubber, foam and fabric in your old shoes is shredded and then used in the manufacturing of sports and playground surfaces.

I admit I've never been a Nike fan, especially since my college days when the company was accused of operating sweatshops (although in retrospect I'm sure Nike wasn't the only culprit). I've never worn anything Nike but they take any brand, not just Nikes, and they have a drop-off location down the street from my office at The Grove.

A quick search of "shoe recycling" found some other programs, although Nike's seems to be the biggest. There are a few donation programs that collect newish shoes to give to people in the US and other countries, like Soles4Souls and One World Running, which is based in Boulder, Colorado but my local running store Runners High is a drop-off location. However, I'm not sure if my shoes are too old to be reused.

Either way, this seems easy enough. I can now check blogging about recycling my shoes off my list. The next step is to get around to dropping them off.

It's not a grind to recycle your coffee cup sleeve

Yesterday I was in a local coffee shop, It's a Grind, and saw something cool. They had put out a wicker basket with a sign that read "Recycle your coffee sleeve here." And sure enough, inside were a few cardboard coffee sleeves and a few plastic lids. Those are the two things that are recyclable when you buy coffee to go. You'd think the paper cup would be recyclable but it's not (I think something about the material lining the inside). So at least It's a Grind was trying to make a difference where it could. I'm not sure who is recycling their sleeves and lids, maybe regulars bring theirs back the next day. Or some customers who get their coffee in a paper cup end up staying (there were some people at the tables with to-go cups, others had their coffee in big white mugs). Although really, those regular customers should be using travel mugs and the sit-down customers should be getting mugs instead of paper cups, but of course the world isn't that perfect. For when it's not, it's nice to see a business making it easy to recycle (note to the coffee giants Starbucks and Coffee Bean).

A landfill of energy bar wrappers

Have you ever wondered if you could recycle the wrappers from energy bars? I have, and I know I'm not alone because it's a topic among my coworkers whenever someone eats an energy bar (which is often). Considering how popular these bars have become (remember when the chewy Power Bars in misleading chocolate and funky banana were all we had to choice from), I'd feel better knowing all those wrappers -- 20 billion according to one statistic I read -- don't have to go to a landfill.

While on vacation I've decided to make it my mission to find out if these wrappers are recyclable. A few weeks ago my coworker gave it her best shot by e-mailing the makers of Luna Bar, but alas, they never responded. Yesterday I called the Long Beach recycling department and the woman on the other end answered my question by reading from a list I had already seen on their website. Yes, I know you can recycle bottles and cans, but what about the trickier stuff that isn't mentioned? So she guessed. She said that since the wrappers have foil, they aren't recyclable. I also asked about egg cartons (since I had her on the phone) and she thought they are recyclable since they're made of cardboard. I'm glad I went to an "expert" source.

Oh I know, just Google it, right? But that's so easy. I wanted to do it the official way. OK fine. A Google search for "Can I recycle energy bar wrappers?" turns up this sentence: "Every year millions of non-recyclable energy bar wrappers end up in our landfills." Damn. But wait, I click on a link to a program for recycling wrappers. Aha. I've found the Holy Grail!

The website http://www.terracycle.net/cbb/cbb.htm explains that TerraCycle, Clif Bar and Balance Bar have started a program to "upcycle" wrappers by making them into other things, like purses. They'll send you bags to put your wrappers in and after you've collected 200, you send them back. And the program is FREE. Where do I sign up? Screech ... my excitement grinds to a halt. After I sign up to be part of the Energy Bar Brigade (ain't that catchy) I get sent an e-mail saying I've been put on a waiting list. Despite the plethora of press they've received, it's a trial program with only 500 spots. (Although later I got an e-mail saying they're in the process of expanding.)

My search continues, while energy bar wrappers collect in my room ...

Today I returned to my Internet search. The website http://www.lime.com/blog/greenlagirl/2008/06/09/oh_things_you_can_upcycle%20says provides addresses where you can send wine corks and used Brita filters. But that's all I find. It appears the answer to my question is a big fat NO.

I know that the best solution is to eat less energy bars. I'm opposed to them for dietary reasons too. Every time I buy one I hear Michael Pollan's voice saying, "eat what your grandmother would eat," meaning simple, whole foods. But it's too hard to always have a whole food snack on hand when you're gone all day at work and exercising after work. Sometimes I just gotta have an energy bar.

So until I get my TerraCycle bags in the mail, I will try to buy fewer energy bars and eat more whole food snacks instead. That'll be easy while I'm on vacation. It'll get trickier when I go back to work.

"The idle mind knows not what it wants"

Drinking this tea makes me happy, but thinking about its environmental impact does not.

I’m not a practicing Catholic, yet I have IT. Guilt. It’s genetic, I’m sure. My grandmother was so generous that her nickname was Martyr Mary. And my mother left me a voicemail the other day saying she hoped I wasn’t upset that she got off the phone with me to take a call from my pregnant sister (she actually felt the need to reassure me that she loves us equally). I don’t have children so the focus of my guilt is the environment. I berate myself when I forget my reusable grocery bags in the car when I’m shopping, inevitably not realizing I don’t have them until I’m standing in line with my bread and broccoli on the conveyer belt.

Another case in point: that hard-working sandwich bag with the tiny smear of residual peanut butter that I keep in my lunch sack to reuse, day after day. When should I finally recycle it and get a new one? At the start of the new week, or is that arbitrary? When does it become unsanitary, or just socially gross?

I’m concerned about my obsession over these trivial questions, although I can justify it too. I’m single, so I don’t have a spouse and children to distract me, and I spend a fair amount of time by myself commuting to work, which leaves time to reflect, ponder ... and berate.

It’s like the more I learn, the worse I get. I’ve started keeping my phone charger unplugged; that one’s easy. I’m turning off my computer more, but on the nights I don’t the whirling fan taunts me from across the room after I’ve turned the light off, like when Monica can’t stop thinking about the shoes she left in the living room on that one episode of Friends.

I can joke and say I have Environmental OCD, but sometimes I get annoyed at myself for feeling guilty. I know these fixations aren’t rational because the amount of energy I’m saving is infinitesimal. Yet it’s like I want to be perfect. But of course the idea of creating no waste doesn’t exist because I exist. I live, breathe, eat, consume, and everything I do leaves a trail. But how close can you get to perfect? Should I have recycled my 4-inch-by-2-inch Metro ticket? Can I recycle the thin plastic that my box of Twinings tea was wrapped in? I ask this as my hand hovers over the trash and recycle cans, paralyzed with indecision. And come to think of it, should I have bought tea imported from England? Think of the petroleum used to get it here.

Part of my purpose in starting this blog is to try to answer these questions, and the larger question of what is my personal responsibility for helping stop global warming. I hope to educate myself (like how does composting work?) and figure out what more I can do to enrich our world, and while doing so, my life.